Mascot

The hare mascot for the Wild Moon Morris Dancers.

Image: Photographer unknown.

Mirror Dancer

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

See also the previous posts:
• Pole
• Face Your Darkness
• Trio
• Ballerino I | II | III
• Dancing Hare

Xōchipilli

The following is excerpted from Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit.

Xōchipilli (also Naxcit-Xuchitl), Aztec Prince of Flowers, consort of the goddess Xōchiquetzal. . . . Xōchipilli is a god of flowers and sensual pleasures. He is the patron of entertainers – dancers, singers, actors, jugglers, gymnasts, and game-players (especially of the nexoxochitlaxiliztli, the “game of throwing flowers”). He is also the patron of perfumers. He delights in perfumes containing many exotic essences, called xochitlanamactli. Like other deities, Xōchipilli brings not only joy but also suffering, especially to those who fail to make sacrifices to him. They are likely to be stricken with venereal disease or hemorrhoids. In Nahuatl, hemorrhoids are referred to as xochiciutzlil, “the flowers of the anus.” Offerings to Xōchipilli include toasted corn bread and butterfly-shaped breads.

Xōchipilli was honored with Xōchiquetzal at the Xōchilhuitl festival as well as the Tecuilhuitontli. Held in the seventh month of the Aztec year, the Tecuilhuitontli was an unusual festival in that human sacrifice played no part in it. It was, in the words of Father Durán, “an occasion for enjoying the flowers which abounded in that season,” and in ancient texts was represented by “a man arranging [or men exchanging] flowers.” It was a time when great banquets were held which emphasized dainty and exotic dishes and when flowers, “mantles, breechcloths, and jewels” were exchanged. Hierodules wearing flower garlands and “elaborately embroidered huipils” danced in the streets, while noblemen reclined on couches, “surrounded by flowers, picking one up and laying it down, [then] taking another and abandoning it.”

As the god of dance, Xōchipilli was honored with the cuecuechcuicatl, the “dance of the itch.” This dance was compared by Durán to the Spanish saraband, “with all its wriggling and grimacing and immodest mimicry.” It was performed by hierodules and by transgendered ciluayollo males “dressed as women.” As David F. Greenberg states, Xōchipilli is “the patron of male homosexuality and male prostitution.” His patronage of individuals engaging in these behaviors suggests a complex set of associations including the role of entertainer, the love of exotic foods and perfumes, male gender variance, and same-sex eroticism.

See also the previous posts:
• The Hare of the Agave
• Kiss of the Rabbit God
• The Divine Masculine Principle
• In American Gods, An Otherworldly Depiction of Queer Attraction and Connection
• Totem Animal
• The Great Hare
• Nanabush
• Among the Egyptians
• An Ancient Religion
• A Powerful Hero
• We Are Still Mythical

Images: Artists unknown.

Pole

I can appreciate why [pole-dancing or simply "pole"] has a greater appeal to gay men like me. Beyond its focus on style over brute force, pole hasn’t completely shaken its deviant origins. It came from the fringes of society, and for a lot of gay men this feels familiar; we know what it’s like to unite around something others see as taboo. . . . [T]here’s something queer about pole.

– Bo Franklin
Excerpted from "Are You Man Enough to Pole-Dance?"
1843 Magazine
March 27, 2019

Related Off-site Links:
The Passion of a Male Pole Dancing Champion – Cynthia R. Greenlee (Narratively, March 28, 2018).
Male Pole Dancers Are On the Rise – Diane Passage (The Huffington Post, May 25, 2011).
Pole Dancing for Males – What You Should Know About Pole Dance Classes – Masha (Basic Invert 78, February 20, 2018).

Images: The Leveret (Puerto Vallarta, Mexico – February 5, 2020).

Face Your Darkness

The following is written by Brieanna Lewis. I recently came across it on the Facebook group Soul Discovery. It seems like an appropriate piece to share as the old year ebbs and the new year dawns. . . . Wishing all my readers the very best for 2019.

Do not be afraid of the darkest aspects of yourself, for they are means to your survival. You are born from the dark, and when your time on earth is over and you slip back into the comfortable energy of the universe, you will return to the darkness from whence you came.

In order to reach out your hand and lay it upon the brow of humanity, in order to give deeply of yourself and heal the wounds of the world, you must understand the darkness that crouches within.

Will you have the courage to see what it needs, this crying demon within yourself that begs for you to nurture it; that begs for you to help it to dissolve into the wholeness that it desires . . . the wholeness of self?

Sometimes it is necessary to close your eyes and slip into that place that craves manipulation, that place where you lock away your fury, greed and indescribable blood-thirst. Journey to the underworld of your soul because that is where you will be reborn.

In order for us to know light, we must know the dark; in order for us to know pleasure, we must know pain; in order for us to know creation, we must know destruction. In these final dogged days of winter, it is time to cut away the death bramble that clings to the soles of your spirit.

It is time to lance the wound and let the poison run out, so that new skin, new life, can form in its place; tougher this time and well-versed in the negativity that exists in the world, this thicker skin will protect you so that you can go and work your light.

There is no shame in watching the train-wreck that is your shadow. There is no shame in staring at the carnage, unable to look away from the horrors that can exist in a place where you thought you’d never find them.

Look into the fire and find the truth, rise from the ashes of your fear and walk again amongst the living, forever changed and with a sturdier stride. And when you have returned, when you have faced down the monsters of your own making, and when you have risen above the flames of your own self-destruction, then you will be able to lead.

You can be a lantern in the void for those who are following behind you, you can help them to see and to know and to learn. This is where you become the light; this is when you begin to shine.

But for now, let those black waves consume you. Let them topple you over; let them pull you down into the depths of yourself because you will surface.

Just when you think that you can’t handle the pressure or the isolation, just when you think that you have filled to your capacity and that you will burst, you will break free and that first breath will taste so sweet – as if you had never breathed before at all.'

~ Brieanna Lewis

See also the previous posts:
• For the New Year
• Thomas Moore on the Circling of Nature as the Best Way to Find Our Substance
• The Role of Reevaluation in the Gay Man's Quest for Authenticity
• Wrestling With the Angel
• Affirming Our Essential Goodness

Images: Abdiel Jacobsen, a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company. (Photographed by Ken Browar and Deborah Ory of the NYC Dance Project.)

Thomas Moore on the Circling of Nature as the Best Way to Find Our Substance

NOTE: The following was first published July 28, 2018 at The Leveret's brother site, The Wild Reed.

The BBC recently reported that "skywatchers around the world have witnessed the longest 'blood moon' eclipse of the 21st Century." This eclipse took place last Friday, July 27, and as the moon rose that night it turned a striking shade of red or ruddy brown. The "totality" period, where light from the Moon was totally obscured, lasted for one hour and forty-three minutes. At least part of the eclipse was visible from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, most of Asia and South America.

To celebrate last Friday's beautiful phenomenon of creation's circling and cyclical nature, I share an excerpt from Original Self: Living With Paradox and Originality by one of my favorite spiritual writers, Thomas Moore. I've long wanted to share this particular excerpt and now seems a perfect time, or, as Moore might say, the appropriate season!

__________________________________

Humans often have a preference for straight lines. We think of evolution and human development as following an uncrooked path toward perfection. We expect our neighbors to walk the straight and narrow. We don't approve of deviancy (de via), which is nothing more than veering off the straight line. Furthermore, we understand that the best straight line of evolution and development moves forward. We don't think much of regression.

It's interesting, then, that alchemists of old, who saw their work with metals and chemicals as a reflection of the soul's processes, described the task as one of cycling and circling. The opus, the work of alchemy, was called rotatio or circulatio. The vessel in which the work took place, shaped like a bird with its neck bent over plucking its breast, was sometimes described as a pelican, This shape allowed the material to circulate endlessly.

I see my own life as a recycled version of my family's quirks, strengths, and weaknesses. I look at my hands sometimes and see my father's. I feel a strong reserve in my approach to people, and I sense my mother's sensitivity. I feel my grandfather's humor in me and my uncle's unlimited tolerance. I do the family blush about sex, and I have its homebound view of the world.

In therapy, several men and women who had been married more than once or had had many lovers told me of their resolution to finally straighten out and move on. They were tired of the cycles in which they repeated destructive choices. But I didn't have much faith in their resolutions. It might have been better, I thought, if they reflected positively on the repetitions that fueled their desires rather than hoped for a release from the bondage of their nature.

One sometimes sentimental way of redeeming the soul's circlings is to insist that they are, after all, spirals. We are getting someplace even if we're going in circles. But I don't trust this clever spin on circles either. A circle is a circle, and there is no reason to believe that human life is correct only when it straightens out. Maybe at root we are coils of possibility in constant rotation.

Rainer Maria Rilke said, "I live my life in widening rings." It may well be useful to note the expanding of the circles in which we live, but it is also important not to lose the sensation of cycles, which may be painful to anyone living in a culture dedicated to the extending line. Maybe in life we never really develop, but only expand the rotations that give us our firm identity. Maybe we should expect always to get into familiar trouble and to repeat both the glorious and the defeating themes that are embedded in our soul.

Traditional peoples apparently honor the cycles of nature, communities, and persons with as much fervor as we honor developments and growth. I sense escape in theories of expansion, because it may be that the soul finds its way by not going anywhere. The circling of nature, inner and outer, may be the best way to find our substance.

We might know ourselves better and be closer to our nature by honoring these cycles rather by running away from them in sentimental philosophies of growth. I don't grow, I am. I don't change, I merely manifest differently the prime material with which I am born. Perhaps if we got off the demanding belt of change and growth, we might relax into the circumambulations of life that turn us over and over, polishing the arcane stone of our most essential selves, revealing more and more of who and what we are.

Modern psychology tries to tell us that we are constantly developing creatures, but I prefer to think of us as seasonal beings. We have our summers of sunny pleasure and our winters of discontent, our springtimes of renewal and our autumns of necessary decay. We are essentially rhythmic, musical. As the ancients used to say, our emotions are in orbit, like the planets. Patterns that define us return again and again, and in these returns we find our substance and our continuity, our original nature and our identity.

– Thomas Moore
Excerpted from Original Self:
Living With Paradox and Originality
pp. 62-64

For more of Thomas Moore's writings at The Wild Reed, see:
• Thomas Moore on the "Ageless Soul"
• At Hallowtide, Pagan Thoughts on Restoring Our World and Our Souls
• Christmas 2014: Thoughts and Celebrations

See also the previous Leveret posts:
• A Super Blue Blood Moon
• Lunar Deity
• The Hare and the Moon
• Moon-Struck

Image 1: Artist unknown.
Image 2: Anthony Duff.
Image 3: Book cover design by David Bullen; artwork by Joan Hanley.
Image 4: Alexandre Riabko in John Neumeier's 2000 ballet, Nijinsky; photo by Holger Badekow.
Image 5: Michael Jackson, Jr and Sean Carmon of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre; photo by NYC Dance Project.
Image 6: Foztography.

The Privileged Lovers

The moon has become a dancer
at this festival of love.
The dance of light,
this sacred blessing,
this divine love
beckons us
to a world beyond
only lovers can see
with their eyes of fiery passion.

They are the chosen ones
who have surrendered.
Once they were particles of light
now they are the radiant sun.
They have left behind
the world of deceitful games.
They are the privileged lovers
who create a new world
with their eyes of fiery passion.

– Jalal al-Din Rumi
(translated by Deepak Chopra and Fereydoun Kia)
from The Love Poems of Rumi

Image: Niko Wirachman and Davide Zongoli (Photo: Joan Crisol)

Trio

See also the previous posts:
• Boys Will Be Boys III
• Dancing Hares

Image: Subjects and photographer unknown.

Ballerino III

Image: Eric Underwood by Rick Guest.

Related Off-site Link:
Ballet's Problem with Non-white Performers – Eric Underwood (The Guardian, September 9, 2013).

Ballerino II

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Jig of Life

Image: "Jig of Life (Rowley Song Cycle)" by David Hollington.

At Possum's Party

Image: Heidi Holder (from her 1992 book, Carmine the Crow).

Ballet Men

Thanks to my friend Brian I've been made aware of a recently released "mini-documentary" from Australia called Ballet Men. Produced by The Australian Ballet, the film features four of the company's dancers – Adam Bull, Christopher Rodgers-Wilson, Cameron Hunter and Cristiano Martino – talking about their ballet journeys and demonstrating their grace, power and athleticism. It's definitely worth taking a look at!




For more, click here.

Hare Dancing with Moth

Image: "Dancing Hare" by jamjarart.

Ballerino

Recommended Off-site Link:
The Trouble with the Male Dancer – The Wild Reed (December 28, 2010).

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Dancing Hares II

Image: "Dancing Hares" by Sophie Ryder (Ballantrae Park, Dublin, Ohio). Photo by Tim Perdue.

Boys Will Be Boys III

Image: Subjects and photographer unknown.

Dancing Hares

Image: OZinOH.
Sculpture: "Dancing Hares" by Sophie Ryder (Ballantrae Park, Dublin, Ohio).

Dancing Hare

Paul Christiano as Strephon in the first of the Ritual Dances
in Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage.

Hares at Play

Hares at Play
By John Clare

The birds are gone to bed the cows are still
And sheep lie panting on each old molehill
And underneath the willow’s grey-green bough
Like toil a-resting lies the fallow plough
The timid hares throw daylight fears away
On the lane road to dust and dance and play
Then dabble in the grain by nought deterred
To lick the dew-fall from the barley's beard
Then out they start again and round the hill
Like happy thoughts – dance – squat – and loiter still
Till milking maidens in the early morn
Jingle their yokes and start them in the corn
Through well-known beaten paths each nimbling hare
Starts quick as fear - and seeks its hidden lair

Sculpture 1: “Boxing Hares” by Paul Jenkins.
Sculpture 2: “Dancing Hare” by Paul Jenkins.