Oh D'mba! The belly without child is like a cinder in the desert wind, like a leaf
in a bush-fire. Oh D'mba! Goddess of fertility, Oh D'mba! you who make the sap
rise in the dust. Here are my breasts, let them be the same as yours. Here is my
belly, that the sap of the Baga may continue to rise. Traditional song of the Baga people of Guinea, West Africa. If you have read my web page you know that I have spent my entire adult life teaching dance, and with significant focus on West African dance. Over a decade ago, this verse of song from the Baga people that celebrates the D'mba symbol caught me and has not let me go. It has been a guiding image in itself of the longing for connection to the transpersonal and the gifts, solitude, grief and passion that that longing engages. That longing to be closer to the Mystery is the calling that brought me to this work. The profound image of an empty womb speaks clearly from the domain of the Feminine, the Soul, where our human ability to conceive of creative potential lies. Without that potential, without transformational imagination, we are like cinders in the desert wind; sparks of hope that are shut out by a seemingly terrible nature.Or we are doomed as is a leaf in a bush-fire, helpless and fated to burn in the fire of a relentless passion. This symbol of D'mba, as you can read in my essay, The D'mba Headdress as as Expression of the Great Mother Archetype, is both the desert wind and the Mystery that can make sap rise from dust - milk from blood. It is only within the embrace of solitude and descent that we are able to discover the magical madness of our deepest longings. Jung cautioned in the Red Book: "No one can or should halt sacrifice. Sacrifice is not destruction, sacrifice is the foundation stone of what is to come. Have you not had monasteries? Have not countless thousands gone into the desert? You should carry the monastery in yourself. The desert is within you. The desert calls you and draws you back, and if you were fettered to the world of this time with iron, the call of the desert would break all chains. Truly, I prepare you for solitude." pg 230 |
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