Using masks as a shamanic practice is powerful and healing. In last night’s Sun & Moon lodge, wearing a mask gave me permission to be more theatrical, more confident, and a step removed from my usual persona to open the imaginal and channel energies that both belong to me and are something other. Mask wearing as a shamanic tool allows access to the transpersonal realms where we are liberated from the burden of our limited perceptions of the small and separate self.
In mask work the ego is silenced, our normal persona falls away and something else comes in- latent parts of ourselves, shadow parts, gifts, insights, desires…we become a transmission for something other than our ego identified self and beliefs about who we are… and who others think we are.
Wearing a mask also effects those around us as their preconceptions of us are challenged so that they are no longer able to hold onto who they think we are. This in turn challenges them to redefine who they are. In the moment of the mask, we arrive in the unpredictable not knowing who we, or who others might become. It opens new territories in the psyche.
Last night we worked with the mask of Medusa which as a symbol is more than the myth of the terrifying gorgon abandoned in the cave at the edge of western world. The mask of Medusa was worn by priestesses who worked with dark moon magic and wished to keep their workings secret from the uninitiated. The serpent headed crowns and monstrous masks were an emblem of the serpent rites and mysteries.
When considering the mask in a modern context and working with it for healing, it is interesting to consider the many masks we wear in our lives, the expectations we fulfil for others, and how we expect others to adhere to our assumptions and expectations. Refusing to wear the social mask, even only if for a brief time, can be liberating, insightful and cathartic. Our wearing of the masks last night was a bit of astro drama though I can also see the potential of mask work as therapy and trauma work.
In ‘Mysteries of the Dark Moon’, Demetra George says that to transform the mask [that we wear in our daily lives] we must recognise and acknowledge the wrathful face that we present to others. In working with Medusa, we must recall her from her banishment and reclaim the serpent headed Queen by honouring the dark moon wisdom that arises from our sexuality. Medusa is the source of our deep, regenerative healing power. The menstrual blood of the Serpent Goddess that could heal or kill, and even raise the dead is reflected in the twin serpents of Life and Death twinning about the winged staff of the caduceus- today the emblem of the medical profession.
Finding where asteroid Medusa sits in our natal birth chart offers clues to understanding how this power may be activated in our lives and the ways in which we wear masks to deny and suppress this power or project it on to others.