Numina:

"An indwelling intelligence or power felt in a particular place, or in the whole world......

The origins of the Roman gods may be the sense of numinous presences underlying all the processes of the natural world."

Making a mask can be a wayto find a face for what is sensed, elemental, invisible, and sacred…..

Creating Story and Ritual is giving them a voice

In traditional cultures masks are power objects, tools for the Gods to be embodied.

To bless, speak, even prophecy.

Wearing a Sacred Mask is invocation, and requires psychic preparation.

Care is taken to devoke as well.

"When you create within a sacred paradigm you find you are communicating with what is within you - but also has a greater source somewhere else.

You collaborate with something timeless.”

Elizabeth Fuller, Actress, Playright THE INDEPENDENT EYE

Each time a mask is worn by a new person a new dance is discovered…..by a community, a new story is told.

“Genus Loci” – “Spirit of Place”: What Faces do they wear? What might they say?

“The Pollinators”

Transformation

Corn MotherSustainer of the Americas

WATER

THE GREEN MAN

VOLCANOGiving birth to new lands

Flowering –

“Flora”

The Weaver

ICE

“Our Lady of the Waters”The Desert Spring

“Dawn”

Holy Wells The Lady of

Avalon

RAINBOWFor The Global Tribe

Forest

The TRICKSTER

Chaos and Order

Drought

Storm

Spider Woman Weaver of the Web of Interdependency

MOTHER EARTH

With special thanks to Ann Waters, Mana Youngbear, and the Community of Willits for stills from “The Awakening” and to J.J. Idarius for the use of her photographs.

All masks are by Lauren Raine MFA. www.laurenraine.com

All images and photos are copyright Lauren Raine and J.J. Idarius (2014)