Monica Sjöö

            

(1938 -  2005)

Auto-Biography 5

Blessed Be!

My Life Story - page 5

Picture on the left: Photo of Monica's oldest son Sean in his early twenties. Like his Mother and his Grandparents, Sean was a talented artist.
Tragically he became ill with terminal cancer and lived the last couple of years of his life with Monica in Bristol. 

I spent the next five years working on a book which was published by The Women's Press in London in 1992 called "New Age and Armageddon: the Goddess or the gurus". It was extended and republished in USA, in Texas in 1998 and called then "Return of the Dark/Light Mother or New Age Armageddon". "The Great Cosmic Mother" had in the meantime been published, also in the USA in 1987 by Harper S. F. They had wanted the book vastly expanded but at the time we were offered the contract, Sean and I were homeless and barely alive and so it was left to Barbara Mor to do the work, unfortunately, the only paintings I did during this two year period of intense grief and supporting Sean were "Lament for my young son, Why, Oh Why?" and "Rebirth from the Motherpot", where I imagine my young son rising reborn from a. lotus in a Neolithic pot, the Mother's womb. I painted "My sons in the Spiritworld" after returning from Lewis the year of the major Lunar standstill in 1987, when the Lunar Mother danced over the Silver Maiden/Sleeping Beauty Mountain, which is visible from Callanish stones.

I had been visited in lucid dreams by Andy, my husband, who had died in 1981, only 36 years old, his pancreas rotten from alcohol. Leify also appeared and communicated with me in lucid dreams and there-fore I "know" that we live on in another dimension or reality. In the meanwhile, when I wasn't able to travel, our WomanMagic exhibition went to Finland where my friend, Kari Mattila organised it and it was shown in four cities. She then brought all the work to the Women's high school in Gothenburg where it was looked after for the next four years until the Women's Arts Museum/Museum Anna Nordlander in Skelleftea in north of Sweden, brought it up there for a major exhibition of my work in 1994 and bought "God giving birth" for their collection.I have to thank Swedish feminist art historian Barbro Werkmaster for making all this come about and drawing the attention of the museum to my work.

 In 1989 I took part with Jill Smith, Philippa Bowers and Joanna Corner in an exhibition that we called "The Goddess Re-emerging" at the Glastonbury assembly rooms. Alice Walker came to this show as did Joan Marler bringing with her the first copy of the Lithuanian Archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas' book /Language of the Goddess". We had a program of events and slideshows during the two weeks, also a women's only discussion  about "New Age Patriarchy", as I called it. After that we had a major national conference in Malvern, organised by Maggie Parks and her friends, called "Challenging New Age Patriarchy" and out of all this energy generated was born "From the Flames - a Journal of Politics and Spirit" which was edited by Vron Mclntyre and Maggie Parks. For the next ten years, until its demise, I wrote innumerable articles for the journal and many both political and spiritual issues were discussed. "No spirituality without politics"!

I got involved doing workshop/talks/slideshows, with first the Oak Dragon camps in the summers and then the Rainbow camps. The first time 1 gave a talk at a Rainbow camp, about Goddess art, was during our Glastonbury exhibition in 1989. It was the Autumn/Equinox and there I met Marianna Chapland who asked me if I would be into helping to start a Bristol women's spirituality group with her and Ros Beauhill. So, AMA MAWU was born and has grown and thrived and changed all over the years. We did/do rituals at the Full and sometimes Dark Moons and also direct political action at times, we visited sacred sites such as Avebury and many a time we slept on Silbury in the light of the Full moon. AMA means to breast-feed/mother/grandmother in different languages and MAWU is a great West-African Goddess. We have always been active against racism, the war against Iraq, GM foods and Globalisation. The Spiral (women's only) camps were also born and thrived.

I have often revisited South Wales and her sacred sites all over the years with my friend Pamela Thomas, who is Welsh and lives near Carmarthen. We had before then lived many years as an extended family, me and my partner and child and she with her lesbian partner in Bristol and in Wales.


Monica, Pam Thomas, Annie (Toivo's longstanding partner), Tezra (grandson), Toivo and Katy (granddaughter) on a beach in Pembrokeshire, 1992

In May 1993 AMA MAWU organised a national conference that we called "Breaking the Taboos/Breaking the Silence" in Bristol and the workshops were run jointly by African Caribbean and white "Caucasian" women questioning racism. During a planning meeting for the conference I mentioned that I'd had the daydream for many years that I wanted to go into a church or cathedral during mass and confront the priest/vicar/bishop about how the church blasphemes against the Great Mother and excludes women. This inspired the women and during the conference fifteen of us gathered outside Bristol Cathedral on Sunday morning, we walked in and stood in front of the high altar stopping the mass. We sang "Burning Times" about the Witch hunts to the congregation. This was one of the most awesome, fearful, liberating and powerful moments of my entire life, (see "Cathedral event"). It was fitting that I carried a poster of "God giving birth" into the cathedral, considering how it has been persecuted by Christians. We also set the date for the "The Beginning of the End of Patriarchy" and on the Lammas August Full Moon women gathered at Silbury to celebrate and danced in great circles on the Mother's womb.

In 1988 I had been invited to take part in California, in a West coast moat of Earth Mysteries which was organised by Christopher and Leila Castle who ran a small gallery together in Point Reyes near S. F. They became great friends of mine and during many, early visits to California I stayed with them in their beautiful home. Chris is an English Earth Mysteries artist and in 1990 we exhibited together in an exhibition that we called "The Stones and the Goddess", at the Gaia bookstore gallery in Berkeley. Alice Walker sponsored my journey and transport of paintings to the USA. During visits in the states I traveled to many places such as British Columbia in Canada where I did slide show/talks in Vancouver and on the islands, as well as in Oregon where Musawa now lives back on her Women's land near Portland. I made many connections, I met the artist, Betty La Duke in Oregon and Goddess women such as Vicki Noble, Z Budapest, Starhawk, Shekhinah Mountainwater, Luisah Teish (African American priestess of Oshun), Arisika Razak, Jsultrim Allione and many others. In 1990 I also traveled down to Arizona where I gave a slideshow to the mainly lesbian community in Phoenix, and was taken to visit Sedona, sacred native American land of red earth and rocks, taken over by affluent white New Agers. I saw the ancient rock carved settlements, and holy well shrine around a sacred sring or lake,by the ''Sinagua'' people.

In Vancouver at a Museum I had seen the incredible and majestic cedar-wood carved "totems" of the indigenous peoples of British Columbia and breathtakingly beautiful and powerful carved art objects that stunned me.

From Arizona I traveled to Albuquerque in New Mexico to at last meet Barbara Mor in the flesh. I was met at the airport by her and Sonia Johnson, who was at the time a firebrand feminist. Unfortunately there were many misunderstandings between Barbara and myself and the meeting was very traumatic! While there I also visited Meinrad Craighead, the former nun, in her adobe home and saw her beautiful art in action.

In 1988 I had also spent time in LA with the feminist art historian Gloria Orenstein and visited Marija Gimbutas in her home up one of the Canyons outside the city. A Swedish feminist art historian who has been very important in my life is Barbro Werkmaster and also in Sweden the feminist Goddess artist Cilia Ericsson. In 1994 I was included in an exhibition called "With your own face on" which was curated by the British Artist, Susan Morland and traveled to several venues in the UK and before then also in 1994 both Susan and I had taken part in "Fantasy", an exhibition curated by Siumee Keelan, that traveled in the United Arab Emirate and was an exchange exhibition with Arab women artists. As a result I was invited to send work to the arts Biennale in Sharia in 1994. That same year, in May 1994, I took part in the first International Goddess Conference held in a camp near Santa Cruz in California. It was organised by Z Budapest, the Hungarian witch and the Women's Spirituality Forum. The conference became biannual and every second year until 2002 I traveled to S. F. to give talks and slideshows at these conferences. There I befriended Genny La Morgan and her partner Donna and they became like my family whenever I came to the USA. Other women I befriended were Leilani, Hawaiian Priestess and the brilliant ''herstorian'' Max Dashu. At the first Goddess Conference, where I spoke about the New Age movement, I met Janet McCloud, a native American grassroots activist who spoke about "Whose tradition is it anyway" about the theft of the New Age movement of the rituals and ceremonies of indigenous peoples. When I was asked to give a key speech at the first Glastonbury Goddess Conference in 1995 I got Janet invited to give a speech about "The Hopi prophesies for women". Over the years I have sometimes taken part in the yearly Goddess conferences in Glastonbury and have many times exhibited paintings there, the last time in August 2003 at the conference celebrating the "Nine Morgans".(Janet Mc Cloud died,sadly,25 Nov.2003.

In 1992 I had traveled with my friend, Dale Wakefield, from Bristol, to Malta and Gozo, which was a dream come true at last. There we spaced out in the great Neolithic temples that were created to reproduce the body of the gigantic Mother Goddess, powerful as Earth Herself. We traveled in the winter when flights and accommodation are cheap, but being close to Africa the climate is still warm then. When we returned from Malta I felt a great need to do some paintings again on a large scale but living in a tiny flat I wasn't able to do so. Dale very generously gave me a room in her house where I could paint and also store my paintings. A Goddess send! I worked there during the next ten years until 2002 and did many important paintings.

We, and sometimes on my own, returned to Malta 4-5 times over the years and I've always come back from there inspired and full of images and dreams. On Malta and Gozo I also discovered, and was introduced to, many Black Madonnas by Willow, editor of the important international "Goddessing" journal and by Cloe Mifsud, Marlene Saliba, Maltese poet, first brought me to the beautiful Tarxien temple and saw me crying there because of grief at what we have lost as women. Finally, on a much later visit, we were able at last to descend into the Goddess underworld at the Hypogeum, full of spirits. I did many paintings during this period.

I was operated on for breast cancer in 1997 and after a month of radio-therapy I lost any creative impulse but had the hunch that if I went to Malta and Gozo and prayed to the Mother goddess there I would be able to paint again. I travelled on my own and was able to stay with friends on Gozo within walking distance of the great Gaigantija temple (House of the Giantess) where I did drawings every day. I finished several mixed media images during this time and they were included in the "Neolithia" exhibition of works by Maltese, American and other nationalities, artists 2001/2. Mari Mifsud, the Maltese organiser, had also put on the II Mara and Malta and Beyond multinational shows, shown on Malta and in the USA, that I also had participated in 1998 and 1999.

Other influences on my life and work were my journeys to Andalusia in Spain. I went there sometimes to stay with my beloved friend Eveon and John from the Tipi village in Wales who were now living at Beneficio, a Rainbow village of tipis on the mountain ledges of the Alpujarras above Orgiva. There I sensed strongly the presence of the spirits of the dark Moors, who had lived in Andalusia during 700 years and turned the region into fertile land in the eighth to the fifteen centuries. I loved the mountains, the sun drenched almost African land, its Madonnas and harsh wilderness. This was land also colonised by the Phoenicians, a Semitic sea-faring people who founded the great city of Cathage in Tunisia in the ninth century BC. I became fascinated by La Dama de Elche, probably a priestess of Tanit, the Great Berber-Phoenician Goddess of Carthage. After I visited Tunisia in the winter of 2002 I spent the summer researching our African origins as well as the indigenous North African Berber people and the mysteries of Tanit and Phoenician Asht'art of Lebanon.

  



Links to pages with biographical information about Monica
  

 

Autobiography 1

Autobiography 2

Autobiography 3

Autobiography 4

Autobiography 5

Autobiography 6

ExhibitionsOverview

On Going Events
2004 Retrospective
 

Blessed
Be
Be!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 


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