Obituary for Monica with Personal Postscript  and one of Monica's favourite songs - by Anna Fraser I am deeply sad and sorry to have to report the death of my friend Monica Sjöö. Monica had been suffering from cancer for the last few years. She died on the 8th of August 2005 in her home in Bristol, UK, in the presence of her son Toivo and a few of her many loving friends.

Monica was born in Sweden and was an internationally renowned visionary artist and writer. She spend most of her adult life living and working in Britain. In the 1960's she became one of the pioneers of the feminist movement, as well as a major instigator of the revival of the world-wide ancient religion of the Goddess.
Through her extraordinary paintings Monica became an initiator of Goddess art. First of all through her now famous work "God giving birth" (1968) and from then onwards through the prolific creation of many works of astonishing and often radiating beauty. These were inspired by her own visions, the landscapes of Mother Earth and by ancient sacred sites, temples and relics left to us by early matriarchal cultures.

Monica also led the way as a pioneer in woman studies and Goddess studies in particular. Her passionate commitment to the Goddess in all her many manifestations led to an immense scholarship.
As a result she wrote "The Great Cosmic Mother, rediscovering the religion of the Earth". This work was revised, updated and extended in partnership with American poet/feminist Barbara Mor and became a classic and highly influential book on the subject.
Monica's other published books are: "New Age and Armageddon"  (now reprinted in a revised edition as "Return of the Dark/Light Mother") and "The Norse Goddess".  In addition she wrote countless pamphlets, articles and poems for various magazines.
Monica Sjöö's important contribution to waking us all up to the dangerous imbalance in our patriarchal culture was not limited to art and scholarship, but also extended to very practical activism in many areas, including sexism, racism, the peace movement and environmental awareness.
In 2005 it is difficult to recall just how revolutionary and ground-breaking the feelings, ideas and actions of this self-taught artist and thinker were in the 1960's. Few people blink an eyelid these days when they hear words such as "Goddess", "Pagan", "earth-centered religion" and so on. But we should remember that Monica closely escaped being prosecuted for obscenity and blasphemy several times just for exhibiting her radical painting "God giving birth", inspired by the home-birth of her son Toivo. In those days God was still supposed to be exclusively white, male and living in heaven.
Monica helped us to see that this blinkered view did not always poison humanity's relationship with divine intelligence, the source of our being.
In doing so she also made an immeasurable contribution to enabling women to lift themselves up from being second-class citizens and inferior beings. We are valuable individuals able to partake in the creation and nurturing of life by the grace and power of our female body, mind and spirit.
During her life "Monica Sjöö" never became the household name she deserved to be. The narrow world of the art establishment has so far been too blind to recognise the beauty and importance of her work. Monica was maybe too much of a radical and anarchist for them and anyhow, she was too busy creating and researching to have the time or interest to promote herself as a career painter or as a commercial artist. 
Nevertheless, she has been an immense inspiration to a multitude of other avant-garde thinkers and artists. In a world where we are increasingly becoming aware of the insensitive and ruthless way we have treated Mother Earth, this influence will continue to be felt. 
If the human race survives the arms race and if the chaos resulting from global warming, the looming energy and resource crisis will not completely devastate our society, she will, I believe, one day be remembered as one of the great creative visionaries of our time and one of its most outstanding artists.

Anna Fraser,
writer/tree woman/environmental activist
August 2005

Personal Post script

I wrote the above obituary for the Eco-Pagan community and my website www.the-tree.org.uk and I felt that for that purpose it was more important to write about Monica, rather my own memories of her. For this website however, I like to add a few notes of a more personal nature. 
We met in 1982 in Brawdy Women's Peace Camp and had a very close intimate friendship for several years, which included memorable and treasured times together at Greenham Common Peace Camp, visiting 'Sacred Sites', including sleeping on several occasions on Silbury Hill, celebrating the Seasonal Festivals, going on that magic walk with about 80 other wild women to "liberate Stonehenge" on the Beltane eclipse of the Full moon in 1985, and many other unforgettable actions, rituals and events.

We had a lot of laughs, shared deep emotions and also argued a lot. I was profoundly touched by the immense beauty and depth of Monica's art. But personally I have always longed for a human culture on Earth beyond patriarchy or matriarchy, a culture where we all look out for each other, where all beings and creatures are valued because each and every single one of us has a unique consciousness. A culture where every square foot of our Earth is sacred, not just the Sacred Sites.
Personally I believe that a change of consciousness of this nature is the most feasible way to achieve damage limitation now all nearly 7 billion of us and countless other creatures are standing on the edge of the abyss! The first step in that much needed change of consciousness is to let go of all concepts involving "us and them".
To Monica that sounded as if I was dangerously infected by "New Age ideas"!
Nevertheless she remained a loyal friend over the years, kept me up to date with her many Goddess activities and always send me her beautiful Nature photos and postcards from pilgrimages and travels abroad.

Monica's son Toivo, his longstanding partner Annie and their children came to live for for several years on our land here in Southwest Wales and we all became good friends too. This situation, together with the fact that Monica's best friend Pamela Thomas, who is also a valued friend of mine, lives nearby in Wales, meant that I had the pleasure of seeing more of Monica (since she had moved back from Wales to Bristol) than I might otherwise have done with both of us having busy lives. It also gave me the privilege of gaining a much wider appreciation of different facets of her being.
In Bristol she lived very simply. She had a very small apartment rented from the housing association. There were 2 rooms, the largest no bigger than 12ft x 8 ft with a small kitchen and bathroom. Absolutely all available wall space was taken up with bookshelves and an amazing collection of postcards, photos and images from all over the world, even in the kitchen, bathroom and narrow corridor. A number of her paintings were stored against the walls of that corridor as well, leaving no more than 1½ft  to pass.  Monica did not have a studio, but her kind friend Dale Wakefield, made a room available in her house so Monica could work on on her large paintings.

Monica's 'difficult side'
No honest remembrance of Monica would be complete without mentioning that she was often quite difficult and 'argumentative', including with her nearest and dearest. Her friend Pat only had to slightly allude to this trait, in her tribute to Monica during the funeral ceremony, to produce an involuntary wave of affectionate laughter amongst all of us present!
It's easy to see how her strong personality and huge Viking-woman aura and abrupt remarks could make her quite intimidating to people who were unaware that she had a big soft heart. She also had a surprising insecurity behind that commanding presence. No matter how gruff she was, when I looked in her eyes I could see the small girl she once was, urgently hoping for reassurance, acceptance and stability, something her childhood was sadly lacking and which was maybe re-enforced by her many activities on the fringe of mainstream society.
I also feel that Monica was so intensely passionate about her art, her spirituality and her politics that it was often genuinely difficult for her to appreciate the value of the heartfelt opinions of other good people, including her family and close friends.
Add to that the heartbreaking tragedy of the premature death of two of her sons, which naturally became woven into her spirituality, art, and politics and one can begin to see why it was so hard for  close friends and family to express an opinion, which would not fit easily into her worldview. More often than not she  might take it as a personal affront. So like many of her other friends I mostly gave up, as I did not like to upset her and we talked instead of the many issues we had in common. Luckily there were many.

About her concept of the biosphere changing into a technosphere
Having said all the above I feel that I should give two examples.
I bravely suggested a few times that her prolific output of writing might be enormously aided by replacing her trusty typewriter with a word processor. Both to save herself work and retyping, as well as the editors of the magazines she wrote for. She would never give me a half a chance to explain why her typescripts full of handwritten scribbled corrections would be difficult to transfer to the computers that are now inevitably used to produce the magazines she so valued..
Instead she would berate me, say that her typewriter worked perfectly and start on a heartfelt speech about how our biosphere is changing into a technosphere.
Of course I too am only too well aware that the basis of our culture's lifestyle is fundamentally completely mad and unrealistic. We cannot continue to destroy and deplete the ecological community, which sustains us and of which we are an interactive part. We cannot continue too greedily steal from our brothers and sisters, whilst ignoring the tragedies we are causing. It does not only cause much unnecessary grief, but it diminishes us as the ones who commit this crime as well! The great question is how to bring these changes about? 'The system' has such huge momentum, and it is hard to steer it in a different direction! It is frightening how much our urbanised society is totally dependant on fossil fuels and technology and how hard it is to even get us humans beings seriously motivated to use our incredible creativity to explore the many ways open to us to live sustainable and beautiful lives before our plastic credit card house inevitably starts collapsing.

Monica never owned a car. Once when we were driving along in my car on the way back from buying our groceries we had to wait a long time to be able to cross a busy dual carriage way. As we watched endless cars and lorries buzzing by, Monica started to talk about cars being patriarchal death machines ruining the Earth, and so on. The way we produce, use and abuse cars makes that statement only too true and it is all the more painful because Monica's son, 15 year old Leifi was killed by a car whilst crossing the road. All I could think of to say therefore was: "How does that make you feel about sitting here with me in a car and about me owning a car and driving it?"
"That's different of course!", she answered immediately and authoritatively. "You need a car here in rural West Wales and anyway - you only drive second-hand vans, which you also use to transport friends and their gear when needed."

New physics string theory?
It was a typical response from Monica: Loyal to her friends and firmly believing that we may make use of these technological creations, as long as it was necessary and in the cause of a  "good" purpose (please see my comment on "good and evil" below) . This may not be a 'logical' or 'rational' answer nor solve the huge problem caused by our love for the comforts of private car use. I mention this conversation here, because I believe' that it is important to remind ourselves (especially for the purpose of approaching her writing and art) that Monica was one of these rare special human beings in Western 'Culture' (see note 1) who was entirely and un-apologetically comfortable with going beyond rationality and logic to access and describe/depict different modes of human knowledge.
In this context it may also be of interest to mention that Annie (Monica's daughter-in-love, mother of her grandchildren and my co-builder of this website) has been visited twice recently by Monica in her dreams (December 2005).  Annie saw and heard Monica was in the form of unusually life-like appearances in comparison with her 'normal' dreams. Her partner Toivo (Monica's son), who is no doubt used to reports of such apparitions from his Mum, responded laconically to the news: "I wondered when she would contact us".

I myself was wondering if she would ever send us a message during Monica's funeral in August. My thoughts wandered off whilst we were slowly chanting Naomi Little Bear Moreno's "Old and strong, she goes on and on. You can't kill the Spirit. It's like an mountain", as Monica's cardboard coffin was disappearing into the furnace room at the Crematorium. I remembered that after hearing one of her stories about her dead son Leifi appearing to her, I was sitting alone, miserable and dejected, in my living room on the birthday of my own son who died. I desperately wished that I would be able to receive signs and messages too. I longed to have confirmation that a spark of his consciousness still exists somewhere in this great Universe of ours. I spoke up loud: "If it is possible for you to communicate, please give me a sign right now!" No sooner had I spoken these words or the B string of the guitar hanging on the wall spontaneously broke with a noisy twang!! And instantly the thought came into my mind "B (of  B string) stands for Birthday - he has send me a sign!" 
So as I remembered this, by miraculous coincidence a string on the harp standing on the stage-type space of the Crematorium (to be played later in finale to the ceremony) snapped with another loud bang!
Was it a sign from Monica's or an event caused by the energy of grief and longing to hear that she was alright somehow? I can't be rationally sure of course, but the event was very comforting to my heart intelligence. Later on, as we all gathered in Linda-Lee's house, I asked Anne-Marie, the harpist, if it is usual for strings to break spontaneously like that? And was it a B string or a D (for Death) string? She is a professional harpist and answered that this sort of incident never really happens, apart from maybe the unlikely event of the instrument being exposed to extreme temperatures. And it was another B string.

Good and evil
It also like to say here that it maybe helps in understanding Monica's writings that she believed fervently in the presence of good and evil energies or forces, who have a life of their own and can be self-perpetuating. This was the topic of another longstanding and ongoing debate between us two, because I believe that nothing is good or bad by nature and the best definition I've been able to find to describe 'evil' is that it is something that occurs 'in the wrong quantity' and/or 'at the wrong time' and/or 'in the wrong place'. Think for instance of such things as 'water', 'fire', 'sexual energy' and so forth.
This is also an another example of a difference in approach, where Monica was concerned that I was infected with the "New Age bug"!

Treasured memories
It occurs to me as I type this heading, that the words 'memory', 'member' and 'remembering' are likely to be derived of the Anglo-Scandinavian root 'mem', meaning 'mam' or 'mother'......
Amongst the many memories that never fails to make me smile are the many books you brought, to Annie, Toivo and myself, for us to read. Virtually all of of them had been edited by you by crossing out every single patriarchal word in them and adding a replacement written in the margin. Like this:
he - s/he, mankind - humanity, man - people, animal kingdom - animal realm, and countless others!!!
Once I managed to replace a 'sexism' you had not thought off, was whilst addressing a postcard.
I added "U.Q " and you asked what it stood for. "United Queendom' of course.
But that was very much the exception. I owe to you the blessing of a much enhanced awareness of all the many subtle ways in which our language habitually expresses deeply engrained prejudice.

Dear Monica, you have enriched my life enormously with your presence in it. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your friendship, our love and our arguments!
I very much hope that this Memorial website we have made, to share you with our sisters and brothers out there on the world wide web, would have received your approval. 
I am alas no artist, nor a professional web builder, but I have worked on this project with great love. It helped me to give form to my sorrow about your death and to lay all the troublesome aspects of our friendship to rest.
I will plant a tree for you on the Midwinter Solstice on my hill here in Wales, next to the 3 trees (2 Yews and a Gingko) we planted one day many years ago for our dead children. We buried whatever tokens we had of their wonderful physical company at the roots of these trees. I choose some photos and parted with a lock of hair I had kept of my own lovely boy.
We sang that day, standing there on the hill, singing from the very roots of our being to our beloved children. And it was one of the occasions when I felt most at one with you.

We liked singing when we were together somewhere out in the open. It brought us in harmony with each other and allowed us to tune into the land and soil/soul. Your favourites usually were:
● The "Ancestor song" from "Sweet honey in the rock".
● The "Invocation to the Animal Spirits" to connect with them and aid us in our work,
● The "Burning Times" to remember the Old People (the text of which I have added to your article on singing this song with other women in Bristol Cathedral).
● "Voice of Hathor, I am all that is and shall be".
●  "Vem kan seg-la för-u-tan vind?", a beautiful little Swedish folksong, which sings about the sadness of having to part from good friends.
It was a delightful surprise when we discovered one day that we had both learned this song in our childhood. You in Sweden. Me in the Netherlands.
I will add the Swedish and English text below, as well as the tune manuscript (sorry, some of the sticks on the notes are missing and I don't know how to correct that) as a small token of my feelings and many treasured memories.

All my imperfect Earthly love to you dear girl, Anna xxx 

Note 1:
I can never use this expression without remembering (with a smile!) a famous Gandhi anecdote: Gandhi was asked during a visit to Britain what he thought of "Western Culture". He answered with warm wit: "That seems like a good idea!" (Go Back)