Vestal Art: Process, Culture, Time, and the Divine Feminine—Part One

Last night as I, the queen, was shining bright, last night as I, the Queen of Heaven, was shining bright, as I was shining bright and dancing, singing praises at the coming of the night — He met me — he met me! My lord Dumuzi met me. He pushed his hand to my hand. He pressed his neck close against mine.

—Sumerian, Song of Inanna and Dumuzi, circa 2300 B.C.

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Introducing the Vestal Plates

In 2013, when I was living in Spongano, a small town in South Italy, I ran into a sculpture of an early Christian martyr, Saint Victoria, in the local church. She was the town’s patron and each December 23rd the residents burned baskets of dry grape pulp to honor her.

Seeing her, and her exposed, vulnerable heart, set me tracking down other statues of early Christian virgin martyrs (2-4th century). I travelled up and down the Italian peninsula. Many of the statues I encountered, most accompanied by slain dragons, were named Victoria.  Rome had a major preserved wax relic of the saint housed in a glass casket — you may have seen it — in the magnificent La Chiesa Santa Maria della Vittoria. The chubby priest who was in charge there spoke to me, waving his hand, saying in a soft Italian way, “Ah. There were so many Saint Victorias. Here. There. Back then everywhere you went you met Victorias. Girls. Grown women with her name. And so there is really no true Saint Victoria.” He shook his head to express disbelief. “She doesn’t exist.”

In subsequent years, beginning in 2017, at the American Academy in Rome, perhaps as an offshoot to the Saint Victoria journey, I began researching the Vestal Virgins. Most people — I soon realized — believe they were prostitutes and breezily dismissed their quite extraordinary education, social position, and duties.

In 2019, in my Somerville studio, I made the first Vestal Plates. Each Plate came with a story. Subsequently I began writing a book, guided by my Vestal Plates, as they related to marriage, virginity, the urge to not participate in domestic duties, and general feminine grace. I thought it a calling to call out the absence of stories about women’s autonomy, bodily integrity, and independence from male control while remaining connected in Divine Female-Divine Male-relationship.

I will be sharing the stories that emerged from the Vestal Plates with you here in Metapsychosis.

Bejeweling the Bride

“Bejeweling the Bride” is the first in a series of twelve Vestal Plates with accompanying stories. The first introduces the Divine Feminine as she passes through the ocean of time to meet one of her roles: the Bride.

Each Vestal Plate in the series speaks in a language of echoes, both ancient and modern, to voice sexuality, service, wisdom, power, vulnerability, mythology, humor, confusion and fertility. 

Since this is the first plate, I thought to tell you how they are created. I work carefully to make each Vestal Plate beautiful and resonant, to conjure an art object that conserves realities of human life, a story that is crucial to culture, history and self-preservation. 

Technically, I start by casting an imprint of a young woman’s torso in plaster, resulting in a mold. The mold is a ‘negative sculpture’ (the absence of a body). However, the mold reveals a particular energy: the defining boundary between flesh and soul; it possesses skin patterns particular to the young woman whose torso I cast. The patterns relate to breath, life force and scars, and are representative of the eternal Self.

I then press paper and hardening agents into the negative mold. When I lift the pressed paper out of the mold, a 3D ‘positive sculpture’ emerges. This positive sculpture represents a witness of the shared supple spirit that each of us possesses.

I flatten the 3D ‘positive’ sculpture in a press. The flattening process introduces the dimensional formula of pressure (M¹ L⁻¹ T⁻²), and the element of chance. The dimensional pressure addresses physical qualities like the length, force and mass of the collective supple spirit of femaleness as she travels through time. Chance impacts how the sculpture’s rips and folds. In the Vestal Plate “Bejeweling the Bride,” chance could be considered the chance by which we enter into a marriage.

Color? For “Bejeweling the Bride,” I chose the natural, unpainted color of the paper that I use to create all the plates because the color is a medley of what would end up being every-body-in-the-world’s skin tone: coffee-with-cream.

Once the “Bejeweling the Bride” form is flattened, I begin a layering process by adhering patches of gold leaf to accentuate the female silhouette. Next, I stitch folds flatter with silk threads to introduce decorative and horizontal body patterns. I follow energetic patterns with dots of white ink. I veil the surface of the gilded and stitched plate with sheer white netting that I had over-stitched with beads and crystals. The edges of the netting/veil are sewn shut around the perimeter of the flattened plate to express the Bride’s full possession of her own physical and spiritual body. She is ‘unbroken.’ She radiates joy and a youthful richness.

As with most completed art work—books, paintings, sculptures, prints, music, and VPs—once released into the world, the art object becomes an expression that no longer belongs to the creator. For instance, today when I look at “Bejeweling the Bride,” she feels as if she has arrived from another realm; a realm of protectors, guardians and stars; a place inhabited by fictional and mythological characters; a dimension of voice that speaks to us from the unknown place we want to believe exists, the place from which we create.

Story of a Bejeweled Bride

Many people cry when they see a bride. Remembering the many reservations and even fears about beginning a new life with a person we may not know so well is real, and so is wondering: “Is this the right person and/or could I have waited and found someone better?” as well as the back room thought of every bride and groom: “If it doesn’t work out, we can get a divorce.”

Knowing all the above is the reason cultures bejewel their brides. Bejeweling provides stable beauty within ritual; because, what the heck, we don’t want young love to disintegrate before it’s given a chance to swim across the river of commitment. 

The dress, the flowers, the music, the necklace, the bouquets, the twirling inside a Sacred Circle, the Tying of the Knot, distracts guests, the families, and the Bride and Groom. Steady, ritualistic, progression cushions emotions and memories that could be as catastrophic and bittersweet as they are luscious and happy. The Bride is polished like a jewel. The universe is shining her way. Cameras capture sweetness and beauty masked, slightly, by her white veil. The young couple has endless time, or believe they have it because they are not under pressure. They have not passed through time. A perfect life they will make, or not make, as love shifts in its dance.

When seeing a bejeweled bride, for a moment or an hour, we become her stand-ins for partnerships that might have been, could have been better, were wonderful, or should have never happened.

Oh, let me not forget to mention the Father. In most cultures he hands over his bejeweled daughter to the man. This somewhat ancient exchange is growing less popular these days. In several recent ceremonies I attended, the Bride chose not to have Father ‘give her away’ because it seemed like exchange of woman as property. Ah! the long arm of patriarchy. The realization that sperm is needed to create babies ought to be listed along with fire and agriculture as the monumental steps in the development of civilization and domestic order as we know it today. Prior to becoming intimately aware and sure about the seeds of conception, goddesses ruled and women had as many lovers as they wanted. Bloodlines and legacy passed from women to daughters. Everyone knew who their mother was. Marriage, well, there was no marriage nor were there bejeweled brides before we understood conception. Marriage is a male idea. Put the woman in the house so that men know who they fathered and therefore can pass on their status, bloodline, values, and gain the upper hand in civilizing ideals.

As an aside, in the early 2000s, Sweden, inspired by Hollywood movies, initiated a new custom of the father walking the daughter down the aisle. By 2024, progressive priests in Sweden said the ‘bride handover’ had to go. The patriarchal symbolism undermined the Swedish tradition of equality. So again, after a brief stint of Father being involved, Brides and Grooms in Sweden walk to the altar together, in a ritual that celebrates marriage in an act of gift-giving between two consenting adults.

Everyone and Me

Everyone who has been important to me, I remember their wedding day, the polish and the glow. The beautiful gown. The partying. And I remember the nervous young woman, whom I didn’t know, crying in a health club locker room after her morning swim. She announced she was getting married later that day. One month, in June, I witnessed the arrival and departure of bride after bride and their entourages, because I had happened to rent an apartment with a balcony overlooking the piazza in front of Otranto Cathedral.

When I announced I was going to get married, my mother wanted to know what kind of furniture my husband-to-be had, because she knew that I, of course, had nothing.

My best friend thought the man I planned to marry would be an okay husband, a man who wouldn’t argue much because, she said, “He has nice eyes.”

Do you remember your Bejeweling? 

I was alone in my apartment and bejeweled myself on my wedding day.

I had a small intimate, last-minute wedding; many friends lived far away and couldn’t make it. I called them. I cried. I expressed my anxiety, took a shot of vodka, redid my mascara. And yes, I said, “Oh well, if it doesn’t work out, we can get divorced.” My dress? A tea length cream-colored lace dress with stand-up collar. It was transparent and required a silk undergarment. I bought the dress by chance encounter in Filene’s Basement Wedding Dress Clearance in Boston a month before my wedding day. I spent more money on my shoes than on my dress, which was incredibly lovely. 

Thirty plus years later I am still married, and I think, looking back, that who we marry is so random. It is as random as the patterns and folds that the pressure of a printing press made when I flattened the paper sculpture I used to make the “Bejeweling the Bride” Vestal Plate.

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The Wedding Veil

From the Great Above she opened her ear to the Great Below.  From the Great Above Inanna opened her ear to the Great Below. With the me in her possession, she prepared herself: She placed the shugurra, the crown of the steppe, on her head. She arranged the dark locks of hair across her forehead. She tied the small lapis beads around her neck, let the double strand of beads fall to her breast and wrapped the royal robe around her body. She daubed her eyes with ointment called “let him come, let him come.” She bound the breast plate called “Come, man, come!” around her chest, slipped the gold ring over her wrist, and took the lapis measuring rod and line in her hand.  Inanna set out for the underworld.

—From the Sumerian Descent of Inanna, circa 2112 B.C.

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Moving on from “Bejeweling the Bride,” the previous Vestal Plate, let us now contemplate the mystery of “The Wedding Veil.” The opening of the veil is an invitation from the Divine Feminine to welcome the Divine Masculine. It reminds us, or asks the question: Is the Feminine Aspect the sexual gatekeeper? 

Yes or No? One group may think that women are less easily and randomly aroused than men and that women are in better position to keep intimacy encounters in perspective. In other words, women are obligated to know when to put on the brakes and are, therefore, the gatekeeper. A kiss will lead to something else; that is what my father told me when I was 16 and he was teaching me to drive the family car. “When you’re out on a date, boys are going to lose their heads, and good-bye clear thinking,” he said. “When you kiss them, they won’t control themselves. It’s up to you to stop them.” 

Or not? I thought.

My father may have been onto something that now, fifty years later, I can better understand: the Divine Masculine sleeps unless awakened by female power.

Let’s look at it this way: Hidden behind the play of opposites, male and female are energies that exist in the body and spirit of us all. The Alchemical Feminine is a change-in-state initiator, as well as the creative potential of form and matter. She looks for two to become one and to abolish duality. The Divine Masculine is consciousness itself; the unseen source behind all things seen, the silent source beneath all sound, and the unmanifested source of all things manifested. The point of dual Divine Energies commingling and joining is reconciliation and liberation—to be in an embrace that collects the entirety of both.

“The Wedding Veil” Vestal Plate invites male energy. “Come, come visit me,” she says. 

Why? Masculine and Feminine need each other, feed off each other and balance each other out. We are all broken, I think, and we look for partners that complete us.

This Vestal Plate is painted silver, like a mirror. She is looking for the match that reflects what is absent rather than what is present. The Bride opens her veil when she sees her Groom, who is soft and as compassionate at heart as she is.

This is a heart-centered Plate that radiates intelligence and spirituality. From the stitched-on beads and star-bursts at the center of the torso, the necklaces and the lace collar adorning the upper chest, “The Wedding Veil” bequeaths honor to multiple generations of women. It is not as flat as the “Bejeweling the Bride” Vestal Plate, nor is the veiling stitched firmly around the Plate’s perimeter. It is as if water has been poured on the previous Vestal Plate to enliven, re-moisten and add space and sexual opportunity to the form. 

Strings of sequins outline the female shape; linen stitching shows the corporeality of ribs and nipples. The necklaces are ancestral jewels. Lace is borrowed, belly bangles awaken Divine Masculine desire, but pearls still lock her gate. At the moment, she is only promising sexual pleasures. She is enjoying the power of her vulnerability, beauty, and desire. 

The Divine Male, has been awakened. He is calm, laid back, anticipating. At this moment, he knows grasping would shutter unity. Abundance and joy is in the mirror.

The Story of Shiva and Shakti

Now I will tell a mystical story from the Hindu tradition that illuminates the indwelling dance of Divine Female, portrayed by Shakti, and Divine Male , portrayed by Shiva, that is choreographed within our sacred body.

Physically, Shakti (the Divine Feminine) exists in your pelvic floor, and Shiva (the Divine Masculine), at the crown of your head. When they meet in your heart, the Union occurs, the magic happens.

The legend of Shakti and Shiva is one the most important legends in Hindu and Yoga mythology. Only when Shiva and Shakti combine can action, movement, and creation take place. 

Defining and explaining the complex Hindu God and Goddess mythology, and the expansions of each of their forms to represent multiple aspects of creation, preservation, and destruction is a big task. Right now, to simplify as much as possible: Shakti is the Supreme Goddess who over ranks all the other deities; she often wears red (or white). Shiva, most often depicted with blue skin, multiple arms and snake-necklaces, possesses 64 forms. His name literally means “that which is not,” and he represents everything that comes from nothing and goes back to nothing (which is everything). He embodies the possibility of consciousness and helps to regulate the creation and destruction process. 

Shakti, the composter, swirling around in the base of your pelvis, possesses the form of a fiery serpent. Most days she is busy burning away impurities, such as karma, or the consequences of past actions, as well as the ties that bind and tie us down into physical reality. 

At one point in time, Shiva withdrew from the world and did nothing but sit in a cave and meditate. (By the way, cave and womb originate from the same Sanskrit word.) Without his active presence, the world started to fall apart. The other gods tried to convince him to get back to work, but he sent them away, and so, the evolutionary cycle of creation, maintenance, and destruction lost its dynamism and began to run down.

Shiva’s pure and always perfect primordial awareness resides in our mind, at the crown of our head, where all things come and go. He naps, waiting to be ignited by the fire of life, to welcome Shakti, whenever both are ready. However, it is up to her to ping, or knock, at his door or else he will continue to sleep.

When the Bride opens “The Wedding Veil,” she manifests her power as the Goddess who is an aspect of womanhood epitomizing beauty, devotion, and marital happiness. First she calls to Shiva with all of her grace and abundance. Then she “descends upwards” to meet him and awaken him from his trance. She wants him to play with her. He welcomes her onto his lap. She says, “Shiva, all this I made for you, it is but a dream.”

Whether you live in a male or female body, Shakti and Shiva are with you. Shakti is the universe’s battery for everything. Shiva, the Ultimate Transcendent, smiles as Shakti opens her veil. She was born for love; she loves unconditionally. She created the great universe for love, for her love and for her devotion to him, Shiva.

The moral of this story

When the Feminine Divine energy is absent, we become inert and not able to create because energy alone can produce nothing. Feminine and Masculine work together. The Divine Masculine bestows consciousness, content, form, and direction. 

We can look at this cosmic couple—Shakti and Shiva—and the image of “The Wedding Veil” as not only the about-to-meet forces of Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine but also as yin and yang, or the sun and the sun’s rays. If you’re familiar with Christian imagery, Shiva, the conceiver of subtle forms, would be akin to an omniscient but not omnipotent God the Father. Shakti is the rest of the trinity—Jesus and the Holy Spirit—and the body’s indwelling spiritual genius.

When we become a complete couple, Male and Female aspects of ourselves and our partners commingle. Ideally, together they dissolve duality and we fall in love. In love, there is not a right/wrong way to be, look, do and have. Such dualities leave us believing that parts of ourselves are unlovable, and therefore we feel separate from the treasure-trove of connection with others and the world. 

“The Wedding Veil” shows the door opening. She invites the Groom to take a leap into the unknown, to joyously expand into each other, to welcome communion. Just as Male and Female are drawn to find themselves in each other—whether in the psyche or in the world— the Divine is also eager to enter.

Note: Both translations are from Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer, by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer, Harper Perennial, 1983