Ancient Bridge of Healing
About the ancestors and the relationships with them.
The pagan shrines hold a special place in the Georgian culture. In the mountain region Khevsureti they are not only know as the abodes of the pre-Christian Georgian deities, but are also mentioned as deities themselves. The shrines are animated beings, that change form, fly and relocate their place.
Continue reading “Pre-Christian Georgian Shrines”
Due to their remote placement in the highlands of Georgia, the Khevsuretians have kept many ancient customs, rites and practices that have been dimmed or demolished in the lower Georgian areas through historical layers of colonialism and imperialism. I wanted to explore about my land in more depth and decided to go to the places were indigenous knowledge has been kept for the longest. Thanks to the mobility grant of Culture Moves Europe , I was able to initiate a research project, that focused on the ancient profession of the Qadagis. The research project pertained visiting 20 pre-Christian shrines of local deities throughout the Pshav-Khevsuretian mountainous areas and inquiring about the Qadagi people. The Qadagis were considered as the “tongues of the Gods” and served as an important link between the shrines and the human community. Let me introduce you here to the Qadagis.
Continue reading “Qadagis – The Tongues of the Gods”
The Khevsuretians have kept precious knowledge. A lot of the insights we have today about ancient Georgian mythology, pre-Christian rites, customs, and the relationships between the deities, the spirits, and the human community is coming from the Pshav-Khevsuretian culture. Pshavi and Khevsureti are mountain regions in Georgia, high in the Caucasian mountains chains. Because of their remote locality and hard to reachable Geography these people were saved for the longest from the multiple imperialisations and colonialisations that Georgia went throughout its long history. In the 19th century the Russian imperial power managed to touch the place after all. From there on starts the long systematic work on diminishing the local culture. Nevertheless, it was only around the 60ies/ 70ies that the deliberate deplacement of people and the breaking of communities started to reach tangible and obvious results in the attempts of creating cultural amnesia.
Then, over the last couple of decades more and more people have left their mountain village homes. Today many villages are completely abandoned, some have very decreased populations of 2 – 4 families.
Since I landed in my native Georgian lands, I got reassured, that the longing to return, was not merely a nostalgic feeling. My country was calling me and it is happy to have me back. It is happy to have any of us, numerous children, back who left for abroad. Leaving behind domestic chaos, uncertainty, poverty, political messiness, and identity vulnerability. We left for countries with stabler economics, defined structures, and dominant politics in the circulation of educational power.
Continue reading “About Georgian Identities, the Ancestors and Belonging”
Frida has been with me lately. Wherever I go, she welcomes me. As a book of her letters to Diego Rivera, as a kitchen towel with her self-portrait print, as a key pendant with her eyebrows, as her watermelon painting hung on the kitchen wall of my friend’s apartment, as a picture on a pedestrian’s cotton bag, as a print on the mug behind a store’s vitrage, and now also on my Couchsurfing host’s fridge magnet in Batumi. She is everywhere. She is there for me. She stepped forward as an answer to my call for friendship with the Goddess Ishtar.
Continue reading “Viva La Vida, Belly Aches, and the Need for Love”
It’s interesting how deeply the structures we grew up in get entrenched in our bodies and psyche. As a 90ies child, raised in Vienna, I can see how the supermarket culture and the fetish of consumption left a complex and confusing mark on my consciousness. My parents, Georgians, and ex-Sovjet citizens were trapped and betrayed by their government, like so many in the totalitarian socialist regime. Their longing for freedom grew through the decades-long of authoritarian oppression and restriction of people’s free will. They left the Sovjet with the hope for a better life. Capitalism was waiting with open arms. It offered individualism and sold it as freedom.
Continue reading “Some Capitalism in our Soft Tissues?”
This time I want to share with you musical fragments of ancestral jam sessions that I was gifted to hold with my now dear friends Sieger Baljon and Arnoud Rigter. Thanks to their beautiful souls, and thanks to our ancestors for bringing us together!
Enjoy the sounds!
<3
Oh no, it’s that time again. A highlighted Pluto phase, activated by the celestial movements in the heavens. On our recent eclipsing new moon, on the 30 April, Pluto was stationary, getting ready to turn retrograde. In my natal chart, the new moon placement additionally hit an exact opposition to my natal Pluto. Nooo! Drowning noises. This post will be a bit time-bound, and astrological. For those of you, who do experience Plutonian stuff in your lives overall, it still may be of interest.
Continue reading “Pluto. Oh, no! Not that again.”
What does it mean to have a body, that juxtapositions myriad varieties of femme expressions? The various connections with ancestral grandmother-lines affirm the endless diversity of “Her”. It affirms that there is absolutely no “female” norm.
Continue reading “Queer Femme”
Let’s put our legs up for a while. We all need some good rest in these times of upheaval. But how do we rest? I don’t know. I’m not the best at that lately.
What I do know is, that I won’t rest until I follow my calling. Child, the calling never ends, take some rest. My one grandma says – the one of the ocean waters. The other grandma – the one of lightning – tells me, rest? Who has time for rest? Full speed ahead!
So, who to listen to?
Continue reading “Take some rest”