Greenland is a mysterious land mainly covered in ice and not much is green. During prehistoric times the early Paleo-Eskimo  2500 BC – 800 BC lived there. Southern and Western Greenland was inhabited by the Saqqaq culture. The early Saqqaq artifacts were found at Disko Bay located on the western side of Greenland. Surprisingly Greenland is the largest island in the world!

Around 800 BC, the Saqqaq culture disappeared and the Early Dorset culture emerged in western Greenland and the Independence II culture in northern Greenland. The Dorset culture was the first culture to extend throughout Greenland’s coastal areas, both on the west and east coasts. It lasted until the total onset of the Thule culture in 1500 AD. The Dorset culture population lived primarily from hunting of whales and caribou. They were a peaceful people. In 986 Icelanders and Norwegians settled the west coast convinced by Erik the Red that Greenland…

One of my favorite Gaelic legend is about the infamous, Ellén Trechend in 8th to 9th century Irish mythology and is also known in Gaelic as Aillén Trechenn .

Art below of a depiction of Ellén Trechend by Nifty Buckles ©2018

Strong minded women have in the past been considered some sort of threat to insecure men in our society. Even in the past a character such as Ellén Trechend was given a bad rap. She was known in legend as a triple-headed monster (most likely a woman with her own opinion) that is mentioned in the text “Cath Maige Mucrama”, (The Battle of Mag Mucrima) as having appeared from the cave of Cruachan (Rathcroghan, County Roscommon) accompanied by goblins and a flock of copper red birds, helped to destroy Ireland and create chaos among the Irish folk. This monstrous creature according to an array of authors claim that the…

When I toured with The Passion of Mary Magdalen, opening by belting out the first paragraphs of the novel’s prologue in song, (ending with the line “when only a whore is awake!”) that question almost always came up.  In celebration of Mary Magdalen’s feast day, I’d like to offer answers that continue to evolve.

There is no scriptural evidence that Mary Magdalen was a prostitute. In a sermon, 6^th century Pope Gregory I gave as his opinion: “This woman, whom Luke calls a sinner and John calls Mary, I think is the Mary from whom Mark reports that seven demons were cast out.” (This confusion and proliferation of Marys inspired me to make a joke. Q: How many holy Marys does it take to change a lightbulb? A: I don’t know. I keep losing count.)

In fact, very little is known about Mary Magdalen. There are fourteen…

Tanja Stark 2015

“David Bowie inhabits Carl Jung’s world of archetypes, reading and speaking of the psychoanalyst with a passion.”  Tony Oursler 2013

The haunting figure of an intubated, dystopian and alienated creature inhabiting ‘Ashes to Ashes’ (1980) world of religious, sci-fi and industrial imagery, singing of Major Tom’s trajectory like some perpetually unconsummated rapture is a poignant image in David Bowie’s oeuvre. No longer worldly, not quite heavenly, but suspended in some purgatorial cursed space in between, it is hypnotic, erotic and somewhat psychotic.

Yet contained within the cryptic layers of ‘Ashes to Ashes’, with its alluring convergence of iconography, symbols, sound and vision, lie essential thematic concerns that repeatedly permeate Bowie’s prodigious output and have intrinsic parallels with ideas in Jungian psychology; a profound engagement with the Unconscious, a complex relationship with the Numinous [i], tension between opposing polarities (the celestial and the chthonic, visceral and cerebral, sarx and…