MATANGI

I learned about Matangi this week in Laura Amazzone's class on the Tantric Wisdom Goddess.

I am incredibly attracted to her in the ways that I am attracted to Saraswati but on a deeper level.  My fascination was the idea of a dark Sarawati, a goddess who is an untouchable.  How wonderful!!!

  I always have identified with the untouchables because I am mixed race and not just mixed race but a combination of black and jewish, two things that a lot of people don't like (or even hate).

I consider myself in many ways untouchable and when I was in India traveling around some villages around Jodhpur my host pointed to the untouchable camp with such disdain and disparaging words and all I thought was they are me.

 That's what people say about black people in America (especially in the past, but still in the present).  I explained my host how in the 60s there were different water fountains for blacks and whites

 and how if a "colored" person went into a white person's swimming pool the whole pool would have to be drained and scrubbed to get our pollution out.

 In America, I always have identified with being the pollution and being the polluter.

White manager throwing acid in a pool where blacks are swimming

To find a goddess who is an outcaste and a goddess of creativity.  You can't believe the excitement to have found her as a black/jewish artist yogini!!!

My favorite quote in the lecture was "food from stained hands and lips." The relief in embracing what is not pure. Exploring the darkness, the wild eroticism, being untamable, going to beyond those places any of us would mention in polite conversation and experiencing the creativity that is there is what I want to do (and may in fact be doing).

When I was looking for places to study yoga in India I hated all the schools that wrote their teachers was a Brahman, blah, blah.. I thought what do I care about that, I want to go to a school where the teacher is an Dailit like me.  I don't want to hear about how pure any body is.   What do I care about that? I am not pure.

 I am not seeking purity. Everything is not pure - a dirty jew, a lazy n word - that's me.  THAT'S ME!!
!

I really found it telling about Parvati dressing as an untouchable to seduce Shiva.

Pavarti and Shiva

There is such desire for the Other in both passionate and horrible ways.

 I think of the unestimable rapes of black women in America during slavery and beyond by white men, as well as, loving mix raced relationships that were not legal in all of the US until 1968.  I think of the unestimable rapes of Dailit women in India.

One of the most interesting and horrorifying books I ever read about untouchables in India was A Fine Balance, it was a real struggle to get through it,

I really enjoyed learning about Matangi  I don't know how I have lived 45 years without knowing her.

Welcome! Welcome! Welcome to my life Matangi!  Please come in, the door (or the yoni) is open!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!