Burning Man 2016: "The Liberation of the Earth, the Liberation of Women, the Liberation of All Humanity ..."

Stage at Mandala. Red Lightning Camp.
Photo Credit: Richard Power

NOTE: At Burning Man 2016, I taught my "Yoga of Primal Reality" workshop in the beautifully adorned Mandala space at Camp Red Lightning. I pitched my tent in the company of some wonderful humans at Camp IMAGINEnation. I gifted signed copies of the five books in my Primal Reality series to strangers all across Black Rock City. And while I did my walkabout, I got some important writing done; I will be integrating these new epiphanies into a major work-in-progress. (Look for the announcement on Beltane 2017.) Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this brief photo essay. It consists of twelve images selected from over a hundred that I captured during my sojourn. Each of the images is paired with a vital insight from some great being whose work has touched me. -- Blessings, Richard Power
See also  Burning Man 2011: Primal Culture and Core Civilization as a Moveable Feast  and Burning Man 2012: Between the Wheel and the Fire, Voices in the Whirlwind.

Horned Woman on the Playa. Burning Man 2016.
Photo Credit: Richard Power

"Witchcraft offers the model of a religion of poetry, not theology. It presents metaphors, not doctrines, and leaves open the possibility of reconciliation of science and religion, of many ways of knowing." -- Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)

On the Playa at Night. Burning Man 2016.
Photo Credit: Richard Power

  “In mythos and fairy tales, deities and other great spirits test the hearts of humans by showing up in various forms that disguise their divinity. They show up in robes, rags, silver sashes, or with muddy feet. They show up with skin dark as old wood, or in scales made of rose petal, as a frail child, as a lime-yellow old woman, as a man who cannot speak, or as an animal who can. The great powers are testing to see if humans have yet learned to recognize the greatness of soul in all its varying forms.”
-- Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (1996)

  

Unicorn on the Playa. Burning Man. September 2016.

"I am the only Unicorn there is? The Last? … That cannot be. Why would I be the last? What do men know? Because they have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean we have all vanished. We do not vanish. … There has never been a time without unicorns. We live forever! We are as old as the sky, old as the moon! We can be hunted, trapped; we can even be killed if we leave our forests, but we do not vanish. … Am I truly the last?" -- Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn (1982 screenplay)

Catacomb of Veils by Dan Sullivan and the Catacomb Crew. On fire at sunrise.
Photo Credit: Richard Power

"The human race is a very, very magical race. We have a magic power of witches and wizards. We're here on this earth to unravel the mystery of this planet. The planet is asking for it." -- Yoko Ono

Catacomb of Veils by Dan Sullivan and the Catacomb Crew. On fire at sunrise.
Photo Credit: Richard Power

"The Goddess is not just a light, happy maiden or a nurturing mother. She is death as well as birth, dark as well as light, rage as well as compassion — and if we shy away from her fiercer embrace we undercut both her own power and our own growth." -- Starhawk, "She Rises: Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?" Edited by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang and Kaalii Cargill. (2015)

 

Temple Courtyard, In the Early Morning. Burning Man 2016.
Photo Credit: Richard Power

“In the Craft, we do not believe in the Goddess ~~ we connect with her; through the moon, the stars, the ocean, the earth, through trees, animals, through other human beings, through ourselves. She is here. She is within us all” -- Starhawk

Temple Courtyard, In the Early Morning. Burning Man 2016.
Photo Credit: Richard Power

"Women have been held back and limited throughout the centuries. Creation could not have been rendered, not even considered, let alone be brought into manifestation without woman. She is principal, a powerful energy. She is first." -- Alice Coltrane

The Man Burns. Burning Man 2016.
Photo Credit: Richard Power

"The liberation of the earth, the liberation of women, the liberation of all humanity is the next step of freedom we need to work for, and it's the next step of peace that we need to create." -- Vandana Shiva

Woman Sleeping On the Ground At Center Camp

“It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for a while and looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires” -- Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (1996)

Burning Man, Black Rock City, September 2016.
P'hoto Credit: Richard Power

 "Truth was the only daughter of Time." -- Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks 

#Earth @Home by Laura Kimpton and Jeff Schomberg. Burning Man 2016.
Photo Credit: Richard Power

"We have nowhere else to go... this is all we have." - Margaret Mead

Richard Power is the author of eleven books, including most recently, "Cauldron Yoga, Gaian Poetics and the Way of the Ancient Future," along with the other four volumes of his "Primal Reality" series, all of which are  available in both softcover and Kindle versions via Amazon.com.

For information, visit his Amazon author's page.