This was written in 2001 for Abbie Conant's "Wired Goddess" project. The quote is from a poem by John Skelton, which I found during my research on goddesses in general, and the Triple Goddess in particular:
At first there were no male gods to challenge her: her lovers were the serpent of wisdom and the Star of Life (her son) who was was reborn every year and destroyed her lover serpent. She destroyed him, and from his ashes another serpent was born. So the Great goddess has a son who is both her lover and her victim: the Star-son (demon of the waxing year) alternates in her favour with the Serpent of Wisdom (demon of the waning year), his darker self.
The central theme of all poetic legend is the birth, death and resurrection of the God of the Waxing year: his losing battle with the God of the Waning year for the love of the capricious and all-powerful three-fold goddess, their mother, bride and layer-out.
The Goddess is a lovely, slender woman with a hooked nose, deathly pale face, lips red as rowan-berries, startlingly blue eyes and long fair hair: she will suddenly transform herself into sow, mare, bitch or any of an array of other creatures. In ancient religions from the British Isles to the Caucasus she is known as the "White Goddess". Her names and titles are innumerable: Io/Isis, Ishtar, Danu, Cybele, Hathor, Hera, Rhea, Althaea, Cerridwen, Arianrhod.....
White is her principal colour, the first of the moon-trinity: the new moon is the white goddess of birth and growth, the full moon is the red goddess of love and battle, the old moon the black goddess of death and divination.
From around 3000 BC a succession of patriarchal invaders gradually superseded
the matrilinear societies. The solar calendar gradually took precedence
over the lunar calendar, breaking the power of the Great Goddess. Fatherhood
was imported from the East: the Olympians introduced fatherhood and a new
child to supersede his father as king: marriage was introduced, moon-goddesses
were married to sun-gods, and the power of the triple goddess was fragmented
and limited as aspects of their daughters.
Later religions were/are purely patriarchal: Judain, Judaic christianity,
Islam, Protestant christianity.
"There was a place, there was a time...."
The Greek phrase which precedes a story, myth or legend: equivalent
to the English "Once upon a time.."
LOOP DELAY
Technical requirements
- recordable length of 14 seconds
- overdub of 2 layers
- footswitch on/off
Feel free to add extra improvisations while the loop is running!
Length: approx.9'30" (without additional improvisation...)
I'm including an extract from the score as pdf file: There_was1-4.pdf
Information about ordering the music can be found on the "contact" page-
see link above.