Monica Sjöö - art of anarcho-feminism, the Goddess and the peace movement

'Monica Sjöö: The time is NOW and it is overdue!' at the Beaconsfield Gallery, London SE11 brings together a large collection of paintings by the Swedish anarcho/ecofeminist artist and activist Monica Sjöö (1938-2005). Some of this work would be familiar in pagan scenes - for instance her paintings have been part of the Goddess Temple in Glastonbury for many years - but less so in the gallery art world which is rushing now to catch up with previously marginalised women artists.

Many of her works feature powerful Goddess figures, standing stones as well as more personal imagery relating to the tragic early deaths of two of her sons. Sjöö was a deeply political figure, going back to her involvement in the anti-Vietnam war movement in the 1960s. An article by Rupert White in the excellent Legion Projects zine 'Monica Sjöö; artist, activist, writer, mother, warrior' notes that in the 1960s 'she became affiliated with Anarchist and Situationist groups' including befriending King Mob in London who 'gave her some contacts in the States, such that in August [1968] 'she was able to travel to New York and stay with pioneering Eco-anarchist Murray Bookchin. Whilst she was there she also met up with Black Mask'.

Becoming more involved in the feminist spirituality movement, Sjöö was very critical of what she termed 'The Patriarchal Occult Thinking of the New Age' which in its focus on the light and spirit she saw as disavowing the dark (including the dark skin), the body (especially the woman's body) and the Earth. She wrote that the 'most frightening aspect of the New Age is its adoption, and perpetration, of a mishmash of reactionary, patriarchal occult traditions and thinking of both East and West, all of which have in common a hatred of the Earth, authoritarianism, racism and misogyny' (Return of the Dark/Light Mother or New Age Armageddon?: Towards a Feminist Vision of the Future, 1999).

She was also critical of Goddess worship separate from political action. In her book with Barbara Mor, 'The Great Cosmic Mother', they argued: 'Nor does the Goddess "live" solely in elite separatist retreats, dancing naked in the piney woods under a white and well-fed moon. The Goddess at this moment is starving to death in refugee camps, with a skeletal child clutched to her dry nipples. The Goddess at this moment is undergoing routine strip-and-squat search inside an American prison. The Goddess is on welfare, raising her children in a ghetto next to a freeway interchange that fills their blood cells and neurons with lead. The Goddess is an eight- year-old girl being used for the special sexual thrills of visiting businessmen in a Brazilian brothel. The Goddess is patrolling with a rifle slung over her shoulder, trying to save a revolution in Nicaragua' (interestingly this is very similar to language of Christian liberation theology).

Women reclaim Salisbury Plain

She became very involved in the 1980s women's peace movement, and in her book 'Return of the Dark/Light Mother' she gives an account of a remarkable 1985 action 'Women reclaim Salisbury Plain' which saw women walking from Avebury to Stonehenge across the military land used for tank exercises:

 'This extremely powerful and empowering pilgrimage was magical and a highly political direct action which as far as I am concerned is a truly spiritual-political women's way... We joined a group of punk women from Greenham sitting within the stones [at Avebury]. Police were also gathering by now, and when we were sitting later at the foot of Silbury having our lunch they approached us and warned us not to entertain any ideas of camping for the night anywhere in the vicinity. We all knew, however that we would sleep on Silbury and by late afternoon we gathered up there.

This was the night of Beltane and we were here to celebrate the Mother. We made a Beltane-fire carefully so as not to damage the mound and then gathered to discuss a possible ritual. By now, we had been joined by the American wise woman/witch, Starhawk' [who] 'suggested that we cast a circle, call in the elements, ground ourselves and dance the spiral dance. We danced and drummed and chanted'

At the end of the procession on 4th May they 'cut holes through the fences and snaked our way into the stones across the field, all the while singing Return to the Mother while police and tourists looked sheepishly on. Our number had by now increased since many women had come from London, Bristol and other nearby places to join us just for the weekend. Once within Stonehenge, we gave the ancient stone-beings loving care and energies and danced for hours amongst them; we meditated, sang, lit candles and dreamed. 

Many pagans and people of the Craft have a love for the land and a reverence for the Earth, but many too do not realise that this is not enough and that one must also take political direct action against those that ill-treat and exploit Her. It was this understanding that fired the women on our walk'.

From the Flames: radical feminism with spirit' (Winter 1998/99). Cover design by Monica

  Sjöö. The contents inside included her poem 'Are there Great Female Beings out there waiting for us to be free?'.  Sjöö certainly thought so and believed she was in some kind of communication with them across time and space.

The exhibition at Beaconsfield gallery, 11 June to 10 September 2022

 

Ragged Ragtime Girls: Leila Waddell, Aleister Crowley and seven dancing violinists

I have been enjoying Phil Baker's 'City of the Beast: The London of Aleister Crowley' (Strange Attractor, 2022), which traces his life through places associated with him. In doing so he situates Crowley in a specific London bohemian world of cafes, salons, clubs and temples, populated by people often seen only as (mostly temporary) followers of his but who led interesting lives in their own right - and were probably much more pleasant/less abusive people to befriend.

One of the sites Baker mentions is the Tivoli Theatre which stood at 65-70 the Strand in London, a building 'demolished in 1914, replaced by the Tivoli cinema and the site is now a featureless modern office block'.  It was here that in 1913 a musical troupe called The Ragged Ragtime Girls (sometimes spelt Ragged Rag-Time Girls) played for seven weeks, an act consisting of 'seven pretty girls who play the violin and dance at the same time'. I hadn't heard of them previously so set of searching at the British Newspaper Archive and elsewhere to find out more.

A contemporary review describes them as 'a charming septette' sharing a bill with American songwriters Harry Williams and Nat Ayer, composers of 'Oh you beautiful doll' and the dancers Ida Crispi and Fred Farren. On another occasion they shared a bill at the Tivoli with comedian  George Formby sr., father of the later ukelele star (Sporting Life, 19 March 1913).

The connection with Crowley was that among the seven was Leila Waddell, Australian violinist and sometime 'Scarlet Woman' consort of Crowley. If Crowley is to be believed the group was his idea, arising from his suggestion that 'she should combine fiddling with dancing. My idea was, of course, to find a new art form. But of this she was not capable. She failed to understand my idea'. 

He goes on: 'I turned my thoughts to making a popular success for her. We collected six assistant fiddlers, strung together a jumble of jingles and set them to a riot of motion; dressed the septette in coloured rags, called them “The Ragged Ragtime Girls” and took London by storm. It was a sickening business [...] In the early part of 1913, my work had apparently settled down to a regular routine. Everything went very well but nothing startling occurred. On March 3rd, the “Ragged Ragtime Girls” opened at the Old Tivoli. It was an immediate success and relieved my mind of all preoccupations with worldly affairs'. Later that year Crowley was 'free to accompany the “Ragged Ragtime Girls” to Moscow, where they were engaged for the summer, at the Aquarium. They were badly in need of protection. Leila Waddell was the only one with a head on her shoulders. Of the other six, three were dipsomanics, four nymphomaniacs, two hysterically prudish, and all ineradicably convinced that outside England everyone was a robber, ravisher and assassin. They all carried revolvers, which they did not know how to use; though prepared to do so on the first person who spoke to them' (The Confessions of Aleister Crowley).

The group also seem to have played at other London venues including the Tottenham Palace (Stage 10 April 1913) and the East Ham Palace, as well as in Edinburgh, Glasgow and at the Manchester Hippodrome - this time advertised as 'Eight Ragged Rag-Time Girls' (The Era, 17 September 1913).

 Then there were a series of shows in the North East of England including the Sunderland Empire with Tiller girl dancers, Miss Louie Tracey, 'a male impersonator'  and the Great Barnetti who produced 'weird effects of a black magic character';  and the South Shields Empire Place as 'Seven Gipsy Ragged Ragtime Girls dancing fiddlers'. They also gave their services for free as part of a benefit concert for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution at the Empire Theatre, Newcastle (Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 29 May 1913).

 

I can find no reference to them playing after November 1913 but more may turn up. Crowley is sometimes described as their manager and producer but whatever his role they also had professional management.  In an interview with vaudeville producers Ellis Entertainments Ltd, director Anthony Ellis boasted that 'we were responsible for the appearance of the Ragged Rag-time Girls at the Tivol - an act which proved so popular that it is now, after a seven weeks run at the Tivolo, booked for a year ahead in the provinces, including a return visit to London at Christmas time' (The Era, 22 October 1913). 

It should also be remembered that Waddell was an accomplished professional musician - for instance she as described as 'The Queen of Australian Violinists'  while playing at West's Picture Palace, Shaftesbury Hall, Bournemouth (Bournemouth Daily Echo, 4 July 1910). Neither was she a passive muse for Crowley's spiritual work, among other things she played a key role in the Rites of Eleusis performed at Westminster's Caxton Hall in 1910, another site mentioned in Baker's book.

The Ragged Ragtime Girls

Leila Waddell in the Rites of Eleusis

Rosaleen Norton: Dance of Life

Getting in the Halloween zone, I watched 'The Witch of Kings Cross' (2020)- a fascinating documentary about New Zealand born artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton (1917-1979) who scandalised Australia in the 1950s. Her erotic/esoteric paintings led to prosecution and the destruction of some of her work, and newspapers published sensationalist accounts of her supposed involvement in 'black magic and sex orgies'.

I'm always amazed by figures like this who bravely lived a 'counter-cultural' life decades before there was such thing as mass counter culture. Pursuing a life of queer sex, magic and drugs in the face of overwhelming repressive conformity was dangerous - no wonder they felt they needed to invoke the powers of gods like Pan against the world that confronted them.  This was an age in which social ruin awaited 'deviants', as for instance the composer and conductor  of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Eugène Goossens (1893-1962) found when his bisexual relationship with Norton and the poet Gavin Greenlees was exposed.  50 years later, hundreds of thousands of people were parading every year down the same streets in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras- but maybe in their own ways it was people like Norton's circle who helped open a space for this.

'Individuation' by Rosaleen Norton

 'In the spiral horns of the Ram,

In the deep ascent of midnight,

In the dance of atoms weaving the planes of matter is Life.

Life spins on the dream of a planet,

Life leaps in the lithe precision of the cat,

Life flames in the thousandth Name,

Life laughs in the thing that is ‘I’.

I live in the green blood of the forest,

I live in the white fire of Powers,

I live in the scarlet blossom of Magic,

I live'

(Dance of Life by Roslaeen Norton)

In this case the accused was asked why 'despite police warnings she was still consorting with homosexuals'. She was said to have been to a Black Mass conducted by Rosaleen Norton, and to have explained to court that 'although she had some other clothes she preferred to wear black - "the sign of the witch cult"'. She was sent to jail for 2 months for vagrancy  with 'recommended psychiatric treatment'' (full article here)