The Grandmother of Time. - book reviews

This book is soul food!

In this lovingly crafted and passionate book, Z Budapest provides us with a comprehensive guide to infusing ecstasy and revelry into our lives. Based in part on the orderly procession of months and seasons, this collection of cross-cultural celebrations, holidays, stories, teachings and spells, many ancient in origin, serves as a vital means by which we can reconnect with our own ancient heritage and ultimately our families, communities and world.

The spiritual nourishment offered here is governed by the timeless body of wisdom that culminated from the experience of all physical life as sacred. (And let's face it -- grounding in nature is the only real way one's inner life is nurtured.)

I found this book to be full of tolls to recreate my personal vision of the world as more connected, loving, significant and humane. -- Jennifer Roberts

Celebrations are a womanly art. Women are the rememberers of our species, the cookers of festival foods. Our nurturing arts are the glue that has held society together, since the first wild boar we barbecued on a stick in front of our caves to the Thanksgiving turkey we put into the microwave oven today. Celebrations are made by women dressed in flowing robes or three-piece suits or cocktail dresses or housedresses, by light-footed nymphs treading the sacred dances, or just Grandma romping up a little two-step after dinner. Our voices rise in heavenly chorus, praising this season or that goddess, this fortune or that harvest. We walk in procession with friends and neighbors through the familiar landscapes, blessing the fields.

This is what celebrations are made of; this is what I wanted to find again. A great loneliness has descended on us. We no longer buy into the old fear-induced religions. The wrathful gods have lost their power over us, and we let them rave and rant until we click off our TV sets. But deep within us there is a space that now more than ever is painfully empty, as if we had a hollow above our hearts where the old revels used to live, yearning to be filled. We must be careful about what we feed our spiritual hunger -- it cannot be junk food any more.

April 1 Veneralia (Roman)

This is the holiday of Venus (Aphrodite to the Greeks, the goddess of love and death, of orchards and sexuality, of the waters of the world. This celebration appears to be a practice peculiar to women, who washed the image of the Goddess in rivers and lakes before again adorning her with her precious jewels and new long robe. The women burned incense to her in her aspect of good fortune, to ensure happy love, birth, and joy in their lives. This ancient description in Ovid's Fasti shows how alluring this practice was, and how widespread among all kinds of women.

Then dry her neck and restore to it her golden necklace, now give her a fresh-blown rose. Ye too: She herself bids bathe under the green myrtle. Learn now how to give incense to Fortuna Virilis in the place that reeks of warm water. All women strip when they enter that place. . . . Propitiate her with supplications, beauty, and fortune and good fame are in her keeping.

It isn't an accident that April Fool's Day grew from this most emotional and sensuous observance. It is not love that makes fools out of kings? Or queens? Let's be honest -- love is the common denominator, the feeling that makes us all crawl and jump through the hoops, achieve heights of glory or the all-time lows of foolishness, most often the latter. April Fool's Day originates from this womanly calendar event when all kinds of foolishness were acted out to venerate the Goddess, symbolizing love's rule over logic. On this day, lovers ordered each other on senseless errands in proof of their love and devotion.

Women and men need the revels for the same reasons. It is a chance once or twice a year to release the wildness within. Why is ecstasy good for us? In ecstasy we touch heaven while still living; we commune with the goddesses and gods who are inside us. Ecstasy is what humans need to endure the drudgery and confinement of the rests of modern life. Ecstasy frees us from our accumulated burdens, be it psychic garbage or leftover depression. It is a way for us to cleanse ourselves from our past and renew ourselves.

Today we drink to excess or take drugs, but can you imagine using dance, music, fresh air, moonshine, singing, and good company to achieve ecstasy? Imagine becoming gods behind our masks, encountering people we would normally never meet and sharing with them the joy of the seasons? Imagine taking back the streets not only for angry marches but for revels, for dancing, and for walking safely? Imagine a common denominator, the love of nature and the seasons, t hat abolishes class distinctions even for a short time, a time when rich and poor celebrate together.

The Grandmother of Time

Zsuzsanna Budapest, 1989; 261 pp.

$25.95 (19.45 postpaid) from HarperCollins Publishers/Direct Mail, P.O. box 588, Dunmore, PA 18512; 800/331-3761 (or Whole Earth Access)

COPYRIGHT 1992 Point Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group