Why I call my site, “The Lady’s Triumph”

There are two parts to this answer and it addresses the issue of the

intersections between the personal interest and the academic.

One of the most influential events of both my brief Ethnomusicology career so far, and of my personal life, was the pilgrimage of El Rocio, a centuries old Catholic pilgrimage held each year in southern Spain. The culmination of my work at El Rocio, combined with my work in Flamenco, Holy Week in Granada, and other studies in ritual, was my dissertation: El Rocio: A Case Study in Music and Ritual, Toward a Theory of Ritual Systems (VDM : 2009). In it, I introduced a theory of ritual systems and culture, a parallel theory of music and ritual, and I began studying processions and processional pilgrimages in their own right. Coming to understand the role that processions and processional pilgrimages have played throughout the history of  Western Europe in particular, and in seemingly all human cultures generally, has been a powerful realization for me.

But the processional pilgrimage of El Rocio is also a study in emergent religion, in religion and transition. El Rocio embodies the transition from pre-Christian to Christian Europe, as well some of the lingering tensions. And I am convinced, that in terms of the transitional process from paganism to Roman Catholicism, the role of what Robert Graves called “The White Goddess”,  cannot be ignored, and especially in her absorption into (or reincarnation of, if you prefer) the Virgin Mary. I make the distinction between them this way; the Virgin Mary is “Our Lady”, and the White Goddess (or Moon Goddess), is “The Lady”.

So what does that have to do with Burning Man? Well, I’m operating a little blindly here, perhaps a bit on instinct, but here is where the personal and the academic meet- hopefully to better inform each other.

I came to Burning Man through the Temple. I was attending a conference on Ritual Studies in Heidelberg, Germany when I first heard of Burning Man. The lady who gave her paper just before I gave mine, was Dr. Sarah M. Pike, who many people now know for her fine work on Burning Man, and specifically for her writings about the Temple. I was so inspired by her presentation that I knew I would have to go to Burning Man and explore the phenomenon of the Temple for myself.

So here is where I am running on instinct: I have a feeling that as time goes on, if there is a truly important cultural force emerging out of Burning Man, it is going to be emanating from the Temple. And I am also convinced that it has something to do with The Lady. It’s that simple.

A Triumph was a procession in the ancient and medieval worlds that originated with the Roman military triumphal processions. However, during the High Medieval and into the Elizabethan era, the Triumphs, Pageants, even Coronation Entries, Masques, and Anti-Masques, would contain powerful allegorical elements, first introduced by the Catholic Church, meant to be instructive to the public and participants. Eventually the actual Triumphs would give rise to purely allegorical studies that resulted in new artistic and literary forms. Most scholars consider one manifestation of these purely allegorical works to be the origins of our Taro cards, the Triumphs, or Trumps.

What I am calling “The Lady’s Triumph” is a project I am working on. It can be found under the “My Projects” tab. In the meantime, I am studying various emergent sub-rituals within the greater Burning Man ritual process, and I am studying the entire Burning Man phenomenon to include the regionals, as a potential emergent ritual system within the technological, so-called “secular”, West. So far, all human culture has been at base, religious culture, and the two terms; religion and culture, can be used interchangeably even today in many parts of the world. But is  there something new emerging in human culture? Is Burning Man possibly one initial manifestation of a broader more radical change in human cultural evolution, or is it simply another variation on an ancient theme, what Nietzsche called the “Satyr Procession”, the perennial need for humans to seek out and immerse themselves in a deeper experience of reality?

And yes, I am also considering Burning Man within the possibility that it may have something to do with a large scale religious, cultural transition, one that may involve a new manifestation of the Goddess, The Lady. At El Rocio, everywhere the images and banners of Our Lady went, she was preceded by the Tamborilero, the “pipe and tabor” player. I called him: “The Lady’s Herald” because I am convinced he had a long history that preceded Catholicism. I see the man, the Burning Man, as possibly a new version of the The Lay’s Herald. It’s probably a stretch...but I have a feeling...and that’s all at this point.

Cycles, within cycles, within cycles...even bicycles.