Hey God, You there? It's Me Again. pt1
Hey God, You There? It's Me Again. is an essay series where I explore the contents of the book The Great Cosmic Mother. Welcome to Part One: Jenny Bhatt's Cosmic Womb and the Macrocosm.
Hey God?
Hey God, You there? It’s Me Again. It’s been a while since I prayed to the concept of your being and your almighty power. I used to close my eyes and pray to you and picture the man that hung by his palms on the cross like the one that I once gave to my father as a gift for Valentine’s day. I used to walk into St. Augustine’s Catholic Church and dip my fingers into the holy water fonts that hung on the walls by the entrance, and then draw a watery cross on my forehead. I felt blessed for the rest of day, invincible even. I would then follow my mother to a booth and scoot in next to her and wait for her to pull out the padded kneelers and place my little girl knees on them so I could pray. When I picture myself doing that I think of the Spanish word suplicar, which means to plead or to beg. I associated prayer to begging when I was a little girl. Because I would repeat the same prayer over and over with my eyes shut really tight hoping that if I said it enough times with all of my might that my prayers would be answered. I can’t say that I remember whether they did or not. But after a while I was begging for this God to materialize before me, to come down from the heavens and be the great father he wanted us to believe he was. Between the ages of 9 and 12 I began to realize what a real deadbeat you were. What with never answering my prayers or helping me when I needed you. By the time I was sixteen I didn’t give a shit anymore. And I stopped praying to this male god, this idea, this illusion, a lie. Deje de suplicar. And found God elsewhere. Everywhere. In books, and art, and music, and sex, and love. God everywhere. In the moon and the sun, the trees and the birds. In my children. Everywhere. God everywhere. God in me.
Hey God, you there? It’s me again. And I think I know you now because I think I know me better now. And God is everywhere. Goddess is everywhere.
Part One: Jenny Bhatt’s Cosmic Womb & the Macrocosm
It is Saturday morning, I am waiting for the kettle so I can make myself a hot mug of decaf coffee. Why decaf you ask? Because this Barbie has anxiety. My daughters are drawing at the counter across from me. They’re drawing trees, and flowers and each their own version of the sun on loose leaf drawing paper. My eldest daughter’s sun is a yellow circle in the sky, my second eldest daughter’s sun is orange in the middle and yellow at the edges and the rays are long like spider legs. Neither of their suns are in the corner of the paper like I used to draw them, but instead suspended in the middle, between the sky and the earth. The eldest has drawn a tall red house that reaches toward the sky, her swirly clouds touch the roof just slightly and you can see she has drawn over some of the clouds. Her sister is drawing flowers and is focused on the grass they sit on, moving the color pencil in strong zigzag motions. Every morning, I open up Instagram to check on Gaza, and the journalists that continue to share their work and truth with us. And as of late I check on the student uprisings and protests happening across the country, a great source of hope for us all right now.
As soon as I open up the app, I see that Jenny Bhatt is live and I am locked in for the next hour and a half. Jenny Bhatt is an amazing pop artist, I came across her work when I had just finished editing Bleeding Girl a few months ago. Working through a collage I was making to use as the cover picture, I found her work on Pinterest and the post was linked to her website. I looked through her artwork and really appreciated the way she uses color and humor in her paintings. But what really stood out to me was her Cosmic Womb series. I was totally sucked into the vibration and tangible energy her iterations of the cosmic womb. When I think of the Cosmic Womb, I think of Jenny Bhatt’s magnificent series. I go into the live and immediately jump in the comments and ask her that if she has time, to please discuss a little bit about her Cosmic Womb series.
It is late in the evening in Mumbai, India where Jenny lives, and it is early in the morning for me here in Arizona. Jenny finishes discussing the history of abstract art and the reason why Picasso’s work is so famous and says, “I promised cthemagi (my instagram handle) that I would talk about my Cosmic Womb series, so I will do that now.” I am giddy and excited and the painting featured above is the first piece that Jenny discusses during her live. This moment feels nothing short of the Universe’s work that brought me here. I settle into the couch with my cup of coffee and eagerly wait to receive her artistic and spiritual wisdom.
Jenny points to the specks of orange and baby blue on the first piece of her Cosmic Womb series, Cosmic Womb 1 and says, “Every particle is part of a whole. Just like we are a part of everything — the human womb and the cosmic womb. That is why I added these little dots here, they are particles.”
Upon seeing this piece and listening to Jenny describe her art I am reminded of the first Chapter from The Great Cosmic Mother but specifically the first few paragraphs:
“In the beginning… was a very female sea. For two-and-a half billion years on earth, all life-forms floated in the womb-like environment of the planetary ocean — nourished and protected by its fluid chemicals, rocked by the lunar-tidal rhythms…
In the beginning, life did not gestate within the body of any creature, but within the ocean womb containing all organic life. There was no specialized sex organs; rather, a generalized female existence reproduced itself within the female body of the sea.”
Jenny scrolls through the series and before explaining her next painting, Cosmic Womb 5 — a much darker and heavier piece, she mentions that this series came to her when her mother was at the end of her life and she knew that she would pass soon. “I was in so much distress that I was not thinking logically. No planning went into the series, I wasn’t thinking at all — the art was simply making itself be known to me. So as the series goes on it gets really dark. Because it was just how I felt at the time.”
Cosmic Womb 1 could easily be interpreted as the sea, with its different hues of blue that give it depth, the brush strokes give it movement, it is also the vibration and energy coming through the painting that feels very aquatic to me. It is circular like the earth, because as she said, “Everything in nature is cyclical. The circle represents many things, the seed, the universe, the molecule, the atom, the human form. That is why I chose the circle.” The dark background could be interpreted as the black of space. The blue circle could be interpreted as the cosmic womb, the cosmic egg, the female body of the sea where the beginning of life gestated.
In my mind, heart and soul I know this is the Cosmic womb that Barbara Mor is describing in that first chapter of The Great Cosmic Mother. Jenny was able to unconsciously channel this energy through her grief and the deep well of her emotions as she navigated the loss of her mother. “I don’t know why the Cosmic Womb. I had no children nor any intentions of becoming a mother but this is the art that helped me during that very difficult time.” she said after answering my question about whether the title was intentional or came to her in after the she had finished her painting.
Jenny Bhatt’s art provides us with a beautiful and tangible visual of this creation story that Barbara Mor introduces us to in The Great Cosmic Mother, that in the beginning we were all created female. That the Universe was a generalized female existence and that it reproduced itself in the female body of the sea — the Cosmic Womb.
I talk at length about the macrocosm and the microcosm but have never taken the time to define them so I will do that briefly. I just want to provide some strong context before we get into it. Essentially, the macrocosm and the microcosm refer to different scales of existence or reality. And when I use these terms I am almost always using them in mystical terms. Meaning that the concept of macrocosm and the microcosm in mystical terms delve into the interconnectedness and reflection of the larger universe within the individual and vice versa. “As above, so below, as within, so without” is a phrase that I learned a few years ago when I first began practicing Hermeticism to describe this interconnectedness. In mysticism, the macrocosm represents the divine, cosmic order and the vast and infinite reality beyond the human form. It is the totality of existence such as cosmic energies, universal laws, and source or the divine presence. Whereas the microcosm is the individual human form, or any finite entity within the larger cosmos. It is basically a reflection or microcosmic representation of the macrocosm — as above, so below, as within, so without. Getting it? I know it’s a lot haha, hang in there dear reader.
Part of The Great Work as we call it in Hermeticism, is the exploration of the macrocosm and the microcosm, it is central to understanding the nature of reality, the self, and the divine. Mystics such as myself (cthemagi, hehe) seek to harmonize and align the microcosm (self) with the macrocosm (higher self), through spiritual practices. The aim really, is to realize unity with the divine and the interconnectedness of all existence.
And if you have been here since SANTGL’s inception you know that my writing and creating SANTGL was a spiritual practice to better understand the macrocosm and the microcosm. This work — in this exact moment is sort of coming full circle for me. My writing and my work have provided me with a better understanding of myself and in turn my highest self.
All of that to say, we are deeply interconnected with not only the cosmos, and the earth but the evolutionary journey that has brought us here as humans. We (the microcosm) are a reflection of the universe (the macrocosm). That is why we are made from the same stuff as stars. If we are created in a womb, come from a womb, then it only makes sense that the Universe, the creation of life came from a womb. The earth itself could be a womb. And if we remove the mysticism and the spirituality for a second we can see it from a scientific and evolutionary standpoint.
Hello beloved reader, we will be back next week with a deeper dive into the creation story I mentioned. For now, I would like to share a tarot card I pulled from the Motherpeace Round Tarot Deck for this essay. I got this deck when I had just began reading The Great Cosmic Mother about a month ago, but this deck first came into my life by the way of a lovely tarot reader named MJ several years ago(you can find her on Instagram as Crossroadstoryteller) One day I suddenly felt like I could finally understand the deck and I had to have it. And I would like to pull a tarot card for every essay of this series!
Two of Swords:
Finding balance; peace; calming the mind.