Merlin Stone Remembered

by David B. Axelrod

  will enter each home—

  filling it with the Mother love

  that is the very presence of the Shekhina.

  (Ancient Mirrors, vol. I, p. 128)

  Merlin’s poetry teaches, coaches, and sings the long-lost, the banished, the often-forbidden goddesses back into our lives.

  For the Indian goddess Kali, Merlin cautions us not to succumb to racist associations with dark color being a lesser human form—or a lower caste in India itself. When Merlin invokes Kali, it is with a love for the darkness and the very sound of her name:

  Black as the petal of a blue lotus at night,

  black as the night touched by the light of the moon,

  Kali is the essence of Night,

  She who is called Sleep.

  She who is named Dream,

  She who is the joyous dancer of the cremation ground …

  She is Maha Kali, Great Mother Time,

  She is Nitya Kali, Everlasting Time,

  She is Raksa Kali, Goblin yet Protector

  during quake, famine or flood,

  She is Smyama Kali, the Dark One who dispels fear,

  She is Smasana Kali, Ever-Joyous Dancer.

  (Ancient Mirrors, vol. II, pp. 23–24)

  And so the poem goes on, creating a rhythm that could enthrall those reciting together and summon the spirit of the Goddess herself.

  The usual form of Merlin’s poems first invokes the goddess, identifying her attributes and role in her people’s creation and culture. Then, Merlin may need to correct misinformation or defend a goddess who is falsely accused of wrongs. Two of Merlin’s poems are hundreds of lines long—essentially goddess epics that tell each goddess’s major story in verse. It is not to diminish the importance of scholarship that we can praise what Merlin has done—transcending mere fact to bring the Goddess back to life. A first encounter with any of her poems in her book might leave a reader to think that Merlin simply copied texts and incantations from ancient sources. Her genius, in fact, was in composing just the words that adherents might have recited in praise of each goddess. Merlin’s grasp of each goddess and of the nature of Goddess religion was so completely empathetic that she could credibly summon and honor each goddess.

  Beacon Press, recognizing the genius of Merlin’s creations, bought the rights to her privately published two volumes and reissued them in a single paperback edition in 1984. Reviews quoted on the book’s promotional literature immediately identified its significance. Erica Jong, called it “an essential book for anyone interested in the female aspect of the deity” and applauded Merlin’s “passion.” The Akiko Dance Company of Hawaii noted the book was an “inspiration for an entire repertory of dances.” Poet and novelist Ruth Pettis said the book “can provide an endless source of ideas and inspiration for women image-makers—for poets and … for those in the visual arts.” Reviewer Karen Lindsey, writing for Sojourner Magazine, said, “These are stories to grow up with, to have around to reread … to nurture ourselves and our daughters.” It should be mentioned that Ancient Mirrors contains artwork created by Cynthia, Merlin’s daughter—a suite of twelve pen-and-ink drawings depicting goddesses and scenes within their related stories—as well as “Ruler of the House of Life,” a tapestry of Isis done by Merlin’s daughter Jenny. Together they are yet another testimonial to the love and talent of both the mother and the daughters.

  [contents]

  unpublished writings

  Merlin with her books.

  Unpublished Writings

  by Merlin Stone

  Inner Voice: Intuition

  Editor’s note: The following is a lecture delivered by Merlin Stone at a 1978 conference on “Feminist Visions of the Future” in Chico, California. We’ve left these lecture notes exactly as they were written by Merlin. In the original copy of this essay, Merlin used phonetic spellings to facilitate her presentation of the essay as a lecture. We acknowledge here that there are many variant spellings of the names of figures and even variations on how they functioned in each original telling. Thus, you will read Merlin’s interpretations exactly as she rendered them, but using spellings we feel are acceptable to identify the various goddesses, prophetesses, and seers themselves. —David B. Axelrod

  Notes for a lecture on “Inner Voice: Intuition” by Merlin Stone.

  Inner Voice: Intuition

  by Merlin Stone

  Before I begin my talk this morning, I feel I must explain that this is not the paper I had originally intended to present. Although it contains information gleaned through academic research and study, as you will soon see, it is not what one might refer to as a purely academic paper. Three months ago, as I began to organize the notes I had been preparing for this morning, in fact, just as I had finished typing most of the introduction to the intended paper, I had an experience that I felt, and feel, I must share with you. I hope that the researched information the paper does contain will be of interest to you but, though I’m hesitant about revealing myself so publicly, I cannot help but feel that it is the experience itself that is truly the underlying thesis of what I will be reading to you.

  Throughout the experience I felt compelled to record what was happening, as it happened, and now feel that sharing the way in which it happened may be more meaningful than any more typically academic presentation would have been. I left the first page of the introductory statements as they were, and from there on, tried to record all that was happening as accurately as I could. When I am finished reading this you may decide that a straitjacket is in order, but I hope that by being as open and vulnerable as I will be in reading what I wrote, that the account of the experience will be as meaningful to all of you as it was, and is, to me as we embark upon our voyage into the future.

  We have gathered here this weekend not just to present but to share and discuss our feminist visions of the future. As we consider our images of the future we will probably each be drawing upon all that we know about life on Earth—in the present and in the past—in order to form our visions of some yet unformed, unknown tomorrow. From the wide range of our personal experiences, and what others have told us by word of mouth, television, newspapers, books, film, radio, or wherever else we gather our information about the nature of human and planetary realities, we form our images—our visions—of the possibilities for the future. Most of us would probably describe our “visions” as actually being our thoughts and hopes about a future that could be better in so many ways than what we have so far known. Some of us, or is it only me, may find some of the more utopian visions set in a somewhat Disney-like scene of plush green hills, dotted with clusters of wildflowers blowing in the clearest of air, where it never seems to rain but there is always a glowing rainbow arching in the background. There may be a few of us who envision the plight of humanity and Earth as even worse in the future than it is today and even those of us—all too aware of the state of technology and the paranoia of so-called rational minds—who feel there may be no future at all.

  Although I too have many personal thoughts and hopes about the possibilities of the future, I would like to use this time to talk about the actual process—the act of women thinking and speaking out about visions of the future—and the role that our self-esteem and trust in our own judgment plays in this process. Here we are, a group of women who up until the last decade or so were probably encouraged to believe that it was natural for us, as women, or as girls looking forward to becoming women, to limit our visions of the future and our own lives. We were encouraged to include images of a husband, a home of our own, and a few children playing in the garden or sitting at the table in the kitchen enjoying a dinner that we would cook and serve. If our visions dared to be a bit grander they might have included images of our husbands, or sons, becoming professors, doctors or even winning Nobel prizes, or whatever it was that they wanted, or we had wanted, to be or do. If we dared to allow our visions to
go much beyond these limits we often met with disapproval, or perhaps worse—lack of interest and disbelief—and most of us learned to keep any more unusual ideas about the future to ourselves.

  Who are we to now not only consider, but speak aloud of, visions of the future for an entire society—perhaps an entire planet? Can we, as women, so long used to limiting ourselves to quite narrow, individual visions of the future, trust ourselves enough to not only contemplate visions that challenge the very structure of society as we know it but dare to voice these ideas aloud to so many others? As I sit at my typewriter typing this last sentence, imagining myself addressing many other women almost three months from now, I ask this question not only of my imagined audience but I suppose, primarily, of myself. And as I do, I suddenly hear a voice that seems to be inside me, definitely a woman’s voice, telling me not only that “of course we can” but that “we must.” The voice is one I have often tried to ignore, but over the last few years one that I have come to know quite well. When first I asked who it was that was speaking to me this woman’s voice told me that her name did not matter, but that if a name would make me more comfortable, most people called her Intuition.

  Now that I have put my doubts into words to introduce my talk on the need for all and each of us to truly and deeply trust our own perceptions and judgments as we talk about the future, I hear this woman’s voice again. In a somewhat jesting tone she says, “If women are at all hesitant about our ability to make serious suggestions and plans for the future, we might do well to observe where the visions and speeches of the men who believe they do this naturally, and well, have led us to today.” Though the voice comes from nowhere but inside myself, I reply, “Who really listens to women’s views on anything, much less something as vast and abstract as the future of humanity and the planet?” Masking my own doubts and hesitations with the cautious use of a literary reference, I argue, “Remember what happened to Cassandra when she tried to speak out on the future?” Almost hoping the voice will go away so that I can get on with the paper, I hear it even more clearly saying, “The story of Cassandra was intended as a warning, as a threat to women in a then still developing patriarchal structure, but what of the multitude of accounts of women, who were actually sought out, and relied upon to foretell of events to come?”

  Full of advice as ever, she then says to my surprise and dismay, “Put aside your other notes on the importance of confronting and changing false stereotypes of women with greater knowledge of the powerful and courageous images of the Goddess, and the effect this will have on women’s self-esteem in the future—and talk instead about the roles of mortal women as prophets of the future and how it was once understood that the messages given by these women were those given to them by the Goddess. This is the part of our vast woman heritage that will provide courage to women who might hesitate, as you so often do, to trust their own judgment and foresight. Offer them this image to take with them—to take beyond the nurturing wall of a women’s conference—to use to combat any doubts in the long years of work still ahead.”

  I consider this for a moment and, despite the pile of notes I have been preparing for months, I begin to think of the numerous references to women foretelling the future, not only in the classic, ancient cultures, but in cultures all over the world. But then, with my usual stubborn cynicism that I know she has heard all too often, I reply, “It is strengthening to know about times and places where women’s prophecies of the future were highly respected, and even carefully heeded, but I do have a bit of trouble with the way they picked up their information. The cooing of doves and their movements in flight? Listening to the sounds of leaves blowing in the wind? Reading palm kernels and corn kernels? It really is a bit difficult for a woman of today to take these methods of foretelling the future very seriously.”

  Intuition counters with the challenge that the editorials we read and hear about in newspapers and on television might not be any more reliable, and adds, “Remember, in the days of ancient prophecy, it was the woman as priestess, or prophetess, who interpreted what she saw or heard and explained it to others. At least she had direct access to the sources of her information.” I frown a bit, not sure if I believe Intuition’s analogy really fits. But, unconcerned with my doubts about her logic, she continues: “It seems to me that these same people who might find it strange that a prophetess found meaning in the pattern of birds in flight might, at the same time, be willing to consider the patterns of the planets on the day they were born as meaningful—or not be able to resist taking a look at those impossible mass horoscope columns in the daily papers.” I argue that despite its ever growing popularity and acceptance, many people still consider astrology to be utter nonsense. “Yes,” she agrees. “I have heard people reject the possibility that the movements and placement of the astral bodies might affect their lives, but I must admit the ones who did seemed to be the sort with the type of mind that would reject anything they could not see or touch or that had not been told to them by someone in a certified position of authority. Then, I hear her laughing at her own private joke about what she refers to as a “techno-rational” mind as she says something about “how difficult a time such people must have with all those strange un-technological, irrational images and feelings they experience in their own dreams every night.”

  “Maybe they’re the ones who can never remember their dreams,” I say, trying to be helpful, but she is already well into reminding me that dreams, above all other signs or omens, were regarded as messages, foretelling the future.

  Just as I decide that she is really quite old-fashioned and still living in the past and that I should get on with my work, she suddenly remembers what started this particular conversation and her voice, now revealing some impatience with me, asks, “Whether or not you believe in the validity of any of the ancient methods of prophecy, will you at least concede that the records from many cultures reveal that it was primarily women who were regarded as able to interpret signs and omens and to foretell the future?” I am forced by the truth of what she says to nod my head in silent agreement. “And will you,” she continues, “also concede that the actual evidence about the women in these many cultures, who were respected for this ability to speak knowingly of the future, might just have some bearing on a conference entitled ‘Feminist Visions of the Future’?” I am a bit less comfortable about this second question, realizing that it means completely revising my notes and outline, but I do begin to consider it seriously enough to wonder whether if some women who attend the conference do not think it is pertinent or helpful, they might at least find it interesting in terms of understanding the past, if not the future.

  At this point, I begin to seriously consider putting aside my original notes to speak instead on the specific historical evidence of “woman as prophetess.” I start to go through the pages of my still unedited, massive manuscript on the evidence of Goddess and heroine images from all over the world. So much of the information that I have included on women foretelling the future is connected to the various images of the Goddess, the priestess so often understood to be conveying the messages of the Goddess. What I locate, even in the rather hurried initial scanning, ranges all the way from material on the oracular priestesses, of the great temples of the ancient Near and Middle East, to an account of women reading the pattern of the cross-cut grain of a saptur tree in Panama. I start to take outline notes from my sections on the Goddess in Babylon, Scandinavia, Africa, Mexico, and, of course, from so-called rational, logical Greece and martial Rome.

  I come across more material about the Germanic and Celtic women prophets, and yet more from ancient Sumer, Canaan, and Anatolia. But after quickly marking down the numbers of the pages where I located each passage, along with a reminder of what was where so I can return once again to reread each statement and passage more carefully to decide what to include in the talk, I suddenly stop short and reconsider the idea of changing the subject of the talk. “Ancient oracles foreb
oding doom and absolute destiny”—the words float through my mind as I strangely revert to ideas I had about the actual nature of ancient prophecy, long before I began studying the many documents and artifacts of ancient religious beliefs. The prophesied tragedy of Oedipus and Jocasta, and its strange fulfillment, enter my thoughts as one of the few references to ancient prophecy that I had known at the time. “This is not the point of the conference,” I begin to argue again. We are not going to be discussing the prediction of events in the future. If we believed in a fixed fate, a totally predestined future, why would we bother to have the conference at all? Our reasons for wanting to get together to talk about the future are to share some ideas about the way we would like it to be and how best to make those things happen.” I hear Intuition laugh, making some half-audible remark about my predicting what people will be wanting to do in California in March as I sit at my typewriter in New York in January. Through the embarrassment of having her catch me doing just that, I hear her say, “Have you forgotten all those texts and documents on the oracles in Greece and Babylon and Sumer? Wasn’t it you who wrote, ‘It is evident from the accounts of the people who believed in prophetic revelation that they did not view the future as totally predestined, but rather as something that could be acted upon as long as one knew the most advantageous action to take. The oracular priestesses were not consulted for a firm prediction of the future, but for counsel as to the best strategy considering the situation.’”

  Vaguely remembering writing these lines some four or five years ago, then locating and rereading them in my own book, I struggle to recall what I had based those statements on. I begin to go through my old files. Memory slowly returns. Most of the prophecies that were recorded in ancient periods were concerned with wars, colonizing, royalty, and a few with the building of the new temples, but it is clear in nearly every actual record of an oracle that within the revelation of the future was the very specific advisory counsel of the priestess.