Thursday, August 15, 2013

Lady Ragnell of the Art World



Stories carry the wisdom and follies of our everyday life. They convey the patterns of destruction and acts of heroism, which frame our dreams and nightmares. If the universal archetypes that populate these stories do not change over time then change must come in an evolution of our perspectives for they surely are psychologically updated. A spell in traditional fairy tales is a metaphor for constriction to a limited pattern where the life energy cannot flow. Those under the spell often do not recognize it as in the spell of materialism cast over much of contemporary Western art and the Western artist. In a story from the King Arthur legends, Lady Ragnell, can be viewed as a central archetype for the artist of our day.

Our lady has been placed under a magical spell by Sir Grommer to live her life as a gruesome hag.  It is also Sir Grommer who meets the young King Arthur, defenseless, in the forest and threatens to take his life if he fails to agree to return to the forest, unarmed, in one year's time with the answer to a perplexing riddle: "What do women really want above all else?"  Failing miserably in his quest for the answer to the riddle, he reluctantly returns to the forest to meet his fate when he encounters the Hag, who offers to save the King, by answering the riddle, but only in exchange for her marriage to one of King Arthur's knights. The King, facing certain death, reluctantly agrees to her proposal, and the Hag provides him with the answer. The answer, of course, is correct and important, but all the elements of the myth are equally crucial. ”Woman” here refers to the Yin principle of receptivity, intuition and connection to spirit, which is critical in the creative process. The masculine principle, the Yang, is the initiatory principle and both of them can be positive for wholeness and health or negative for destruction.

Why and by whom a spell is cast is extremely significant in these legends which provides a map to the human psyche. It is said in the story that she was put under the spell because a powerful knight took a dislike to her ‘quick will.’ It seems she knew exactly what she wanted and because of that Sir Grommer changed her from a lovely young woman in her prime into an aging, warty, stooped, foul smelling old woman who drooled through her rotting teeth. We have to assume that ‘quick will’ in terms of creative process is different for the Yin and the Yang. Quick willed for the Yang in the artist may be knowing the art market, having a finger on the pulse of public response, and so on. Quick willedness of the feminine, which can aggravate the patriarch, is a different way of knowing, and does not always yield a viable product that the masculine can utilize.

Lady Ragnell in the form of the Hag is the Yin principle tied and bound from her vital impulses, her source; all those things that protect, nurture and allow the natural energy of her ‘quick will’ to flow. She knows the answer to the riddle that can save the King and the Kingdom because she is living it. She bargains her answer to marry Sir Gawain, the knight in the Kingdom with the highest integrity, because this is her only hope of breaking the spell. She is delivered to the marriage altar and then to his bedchamber because she supplies the solution to the riddle that no other woman in the Kingdom can furnish. The one thing that women (artist) want above all else is . . .sovereignty. 

As we well know from the dramatic illustration in Communist Russia and China, the artist cannot be a mouth piece of the state, or anything or anyone else. The artist must have his or her autonomy, just as the masculine principle within the artist must trust and respect the feminine principle. Lady Ragnell, as the Hag, is the dark shadow of the artist who is constrained by the need to please, as well as rebel against outside influences, either way she loses her own authentic impulses. She needs to enlist her own masculine self to protect, trust and value what she knows to be right.

Lady Ragnell’s spell has two parts. The first is the easiest broken in all of us — but it is what causes us to live a dual life. When Sir Gawain kisses her on their wedding night she becomes her beautiful, powerful self, but, like us, she cannot easily maintain this shape without slipping back into her disempowered self. She asks him whether he wants her fair by night in the bedchamber or fair by day in court. This is a hard question for the masculine, particularly in societies where an external feminine symbol reflects back their own masculine power through beauty. Sir Gawain, understands the dilemma, and finally concludes that she must decide, and that he will respect whichever decision she makes. With this declaration the second part of the spell is finally broken.

What do you want as a woman or as the feminine in the artist? If you could only have one thing, do you want success in your inner life or in your outer life? Artists are acknowledged for riding the roller coaster between public and private life. Even as Sir Gawain's answer breaks the second spell for Lady Ragnell, we well know that the twisted, decaying Hag form who restricts the vital energy flow will be constantly lurk in the shadows. If public and private life exists separately from each other, there will always be fragmentation. The artist in us all wants to flourish and needs to be seen, above all, by our own selves for who we are.

It is easy to identify with our appearance or, for an artist, with how our work is received in the world. Women, in particular, are trained to perceive self as a projected image, rather than being the embodiment of creative forces. Healing of the first part of the curse is liberating, but it leads to the second kind of fragmentation. Buddhism speaks of the flash of insight that comes when you see how both the Maiden and the Hag are illusions. This awareness is initiated and supported by the masculine principle that enables the unification. We cannot integrate the fragmentation through the will or by techniques, only through love and conscious awareness of unconditional acceptance, like Sir Gawain in his value for the higher cause of the Kingdom. He resists relating to the Hag through a vision of perfection, a vision that would be crippling to them both, instead he creates a more encompassing vessel. This kind of vision and dedication is what artists need to claim personal sovereignty.

     Majio