CALLING ALL YOGINIS, CRAZY SAINTS, WILD WOMEN, & ALLIES TO CUT LOOSE & COME TO THE DANCE!

WHEN: Hallowe'en (All Hallows Eve, October 31st, 6-8:30 pm)

WHERE: San Francisco (Gathering at the 16th Street BART station from 6-7)

WHAT: A Dance for Life, to Break the Spell of Illusion, to create Regime

Change!

Dear Motherpeace Friend:

This is a preliminary "heads up" letter to let you know that a loose affiliation of us met last night in San Francisco to begin to create this upcoming energetic Hallowe'en event under the auspices of Mad Women Productions (Anne Bluethenthal) and Wicked Witch Productions (Krissy Keefer). I'm writing now to encourage you to mark your calendar and wait for further details to follow in October. Because Mercury goes retrograde tomorrow, and because I'm leaving for Italy several weeks, I feel the need to get this out today.

This COME TO THE DANCE event is a direct result of all the wonderful encouraging messages I received back from hundreds of you after I sent my piece suggesting that we cut free from old patterns of "proper" political behavior and hit the streets dancing with our vision, our love, and our precious shakti energy. So many of you wrote to say you would be happy to join me dancing in the streets, that I decided to ask some creative friends (Starhawk, Max Dashu, Carolyn Brandy, and others) to help me make that happen. We intend to get a trolley and a flat-bed truck, with drummers, dancers, singers, and other wild and crazy beings, to raise our spirits and create a shift in the patterns of energy.

The false illusion that has been (mis)cast over our population for the last eight years has reached a tipping point?they have finally gone too far?and we can now begin to see through it and (together) BREAK THE SPELL!! What better time for such potent collective magic than on Hallowe'en, when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest.

In my Tibetan Buddhist practice, we call in the fierce or wrathful goddess, the Black Dakini, to cut our illusions with her ancient crescent knife. This powerful dark goddess, Tro-ma ("Angry Woman") represents the lucid mirror-like clarity in each of us that refuses to be duped. She is not seduced by the clouds of glamour or the mountains of "spin" that surround us. She sees straight through to the core, knowing things in their essence. Totally compassionate, she liberates through laughter-and poof, illusions dissolve like so many empty bubbles into emptiness.

Black Dakini rituals are performed for "subduing the demons," and the worst "demons" are considered to the FEARS and DOUBTS that rob us of our integrity. So instead of sitting around worrying about what "they" are going to do next, or wondering what will happen to us in the next four years, let's face off with the dangers ahead and fearlessly dissolve the illusion of power-over. In the words of one ancient invocation to the Black Dakini, let us "subdue the demons through splendor" by enacting a group display of her ritual, the collective "Laughter of the Dakinis." And what is the essential nature of the Dakini? She is almost always depicted in a dancing pose-she is, in fact, the original Dancing Queen. She represents the liberated state of being "free and female" (to use the title of the revolutionary 1970s' book by feminist Barbara Seaman, who died this year).

I urge you to think about ways you might be able to participate with this ecstatic event on Hallowe'en, whether you are near or far. If you can come in person, please do so-we hope for hundreds (thousands?) of dancing Dakinis and their allies to join us in the Mission that night. This is not a partisan political rally, but a super-charged, energetic, ecstatic gathering of "mad women" (Maenads) and their friends to make a magical SPELL for Regime Change. The only agenda is dancing in the streets and celebrating the goodness of life. We thought we would bring brooms to sweep away the corruption and gloom.

If you want to volunteer, help in any way, or be part of the organizing, please contact Krissy Keefer at Dance Mission while I am out of the country. She can be reached by phone at 415-826-4401 or by email

I will return on October 22nd and I'll write to you again at that time with more information.

With lots of love and loads of enthusiasm, Vicki

P.S. I will attach a photo of the Dakini collage I made when I was beginning to think about really doing this event. Enjoy!

Here is the stunning prophesy Starhawk has written for us to chant together that night, along with an image of two dancing dakini skeletons from the Samye Monastery in Tibet:

Maenad Prophecy (by Starhawk)

When kings wage unjust war,

When poison fills the skies,

When the rich prey on the poor,

When hope for justice dies

Of malice and of lies,

Then a wild and fearless band

Of women shall arise

Crazy saints, yoginis,

Peering through the gloom,

Maenads and dakinis

Witches grab your brooms!

Sweep away the stench

Sweep away the sneers!

Sweep away the clench

Of hunger and of fears

Dance to feel the passion

Dance to wake the wild,

To honor deep compassion,

For the forest and the child,

Dance to keep the Arctic cool,

To keep the jungle green,

Dance for every holy fool,

For every wound unseen.

Dance for justice, dance for peace

Dance for life to thrive,

May beauty, health and joy increase

For every being alive

Dance in love, dance in wrath,

For chains to fall apart,

Dance to choose a better path,

Dance for strength of heart,

All across the nation,

Bankers quail and glower,

Cracked is the foundation

Of the bastions of power

Strong walls crumble,

Kings face their final hour,

An angry earth shall rumble,

Down shall fall the Tower.

And through its stones shall weave the roots

Of a living tree

That offers us its shining fruits

Of truth and liberty

Fruit to fill each empty hand

With sweet gifts of the earth

Dance to heal this bleeding land--

A new world comes to birth