Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry

Arational Learning in an Irrational World

Barbara A. Bickel

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783030457440
• eBook ISBN: 9783030457457
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book provides insights into the practice of trance-based inquiry through arts-based research, serving as a beacon to guide the way to thresholds of ancient, yet novel, transmissions. Embedded in lived experience and theory, this book introduces the reader to the liminal space of place and trance-based inquiry processes entwined with creative artworkings. The interweaving of art, ritual, and trance-based inquiry opens sacred spaces for learning and unlearning that bring spirit into form. Each chapter presents examples from women artists and culminates with experiential practices drawn from the author's decades of creative peregrinations to assist artists, teachers, and researchers in transmitting a conscious way of practicing and creating with trance.

        

© The Author(s) 2020

B. A. BickelArt, Ritual, and Trance InquiryPalgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Scienceshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: An Earth-Based Sensual Spirituality of Art, Ritual and Trance

Barbara A. Bickel¹

(1)

Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, USA

Abstract

This chapter begins to explore methods of inquiry and learning to engage a rematriation that includes grieving for and with the Earth our m/other. New old ways of reclaiming and regenerating human arational abilities are introduced through teaching and practicing art, ritual and trance as inquiry processes (not requiring drugs and/or paranormal or psychic abilities) are introduced. The chapter closes with an invitation into a ritual practice of creating sacred space for inquiry and learning.

Keywords

ArtRitualTranceMatrixialBorderspacesBracha EttingerArtCompassionSensual spiritualityEarthRematriationArationalWorldviews

End Abstract

Tea steeps in blue mug

reach for candle, strike a match

circle of warmth spreads.

Her artworking

on compassion and spirit,

the psyche within the cosmos,

beyond modernity

its “empathy versus abstraction”

In Western historical abstraction,

such a feminine-matrixial dimension

was unimaginable

(found in Ettinger¹)

Art, ritual and trance inquiry invite an interrelational entrance into fascinating liminal spaces of knowing, not knowing and being. When the entrance is related to a place, geologically and sacredly, the voice of the Earth can emerge and “inmerge”² with the inquirer. Listening to the voice of the Earth while in the writing inquiry process I awoke to becoming the Earth, answering the call of poets; Hélène Cixous, who beckons us to become “the earth of writing,”³ and Marna Hauk who illuminates Earthvox or the Earth’s voice through dreaming and writing of/with/for/as the Earth’s voice. Because of this I capitalize Earth when it appears throughout the book, acknowledging my place as an earthling.⁴

This book offers methods of inquiry and learning to engage a rematriation that includes grieving for and with the Earth our m/other. New old ways of reclaiming and regenerating human arational abilities are introduced through teaching and practicing art, ritual and trance as inquiry processes (not requiring drugs and/or paranormal or psychic abilities). The arational, drawing from poet philosopher Jean Gebser,⁵ is a form of knowing that includes the body, emotions, senses, intuition, imagination, artmaking, the mystical, spiritual and relational, alongside the rational. The arational viewed from the Western rational perspective , has most often been confused with the irrational, thus disqualifying it as a valid and significant site of learning. The arational has historically been acknowledged and valued within mystic traditions , and by artists.⁶

Through inquiry focused artmaking this book journeys into the arational, numinous experiences of place, ritual, trance-based inquiry and learning. Introduced through a lens of a/r/tography as ritual, the reader is presented with art, artists, theories, and art/trance practices. Within a/r/tography as ritual the spaces of trance and ritual open up artistic inquiry , extending, deepening, and integrating what is revealed in the process. Interweaving learning, unlearning, and making, with place and sacred space⁷ a/r/tography as ritual is where one’s existence is opened up rather than closed down.

Art and sensual spirituality are the heart and circulatory system of the book, trance-formation is the taught practice, and ritual is the holding vessel. Throughout the book “found poems” embody academic thought co-poetically. They are “poems found in the environment, composed from words and phrases in previous existing texts.” Original words may be altered, omitted or changed. The source of the text is in brackets below the poem.⁸ Haikus are planted as earthling seeds at the start of each chapter sharing a moment of ritual taking place during the writing process.⁹ They are offered as a sacred Earth-based reflective pause for the reader to remember the rich soil found in their own daily rituals.

Sensual Spirituality

Blood and bone,

prayers and praise,

sinking into the mystery of

all our cells

a dancing exegete.

Here is the call to dance

a sacred space for

embodied inquiry.

(found in Celeste Snowber¹⁰)

A sensual spirituality returns one to embodied ecsta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: An Earth-Based Sensual Spirituality of Art, Ritual and Trance
• 2. A/r/tography as Ritual and Dreaming in Matrixial Borderspace(s)
• 3. Trance, Sacred Place and Collaboration
• 4. Artists and Trance
• 5. The Gestare Art Collective: With Nané Jordan and Medwyn McConachy
• 6. Attending to Ancient Voices
• 7. Performance Ritual: With Tannis Hugill
• 8. Dreaming into Lines of Matrixial Time
• Back Matter