Here’s a strange rhetorical question for you: What do SF Carnaval and The Da Vinci Code have in common? In case you’ve been sleeping under the covers for the last year, The Da Vinci Code is the blockbuster novel that’s been at the top of the Bestseller list for months and has sold something like six million copies.

Among other things, it is about a fanciful French secret society, the Priory of Sion, whose task it has been to guard the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. You see, they had children and their descendents have had to play hide and seek with the Church, as the Church is none too thrilled with having their power and the official storyline threatened.

If you’ve not read the book, I won’t give the plot away, but one of its assumptions is that Mary Magdalene – often identified as the fallen woman who repents and follows Jesus – is actually a symbol for the Divine Feminine. So what is the Divine Feminine and what does that have to do with Carnaval? Patience, my friend, we’re getting there.

The Divine Feminine is simply a name for the aspects of God, the Universe, and the Earth that manifest to us as feminine qualities: fertile, merciful, nurturing, wise, and sensuous. Of course, as Feminism has been telling us for the last thirty-some years, traditionally identified feminine or masculine qualities are not the exclusive possession of either gender. But that’s beside the point here. The Divine Feminine is a spiritual force, for want of a better word, that has had to take the back seat to the masculine characterization of God the Father, which has been the primary way of looking at the Divine for the past two millennia.

Once upon a time, in traditional societies, (and even in the present in polytheistic religions such as Hinduism or Vodoun, Macumba, or Yoruba), there were both gods and goddesses, both feminine and masculine representations of universal qualities. This exuberant spiritual panoply has always seemed a trifle, oh, unruly, to the monolithic powers that be. And that’s where Carnaval comes in.

Carnaval represents the unstoppable celebration of beauty, rhythm, enthusiasm, movement, color, and joy that at least once a year gets to boil over and energize the community. Both men and women and boys and girls of all ages get to participate and dress up in fantastic plumage and bright scanty costumes. No offense to the Father, but Carnaval sure seems like a celebration of the Divine Feminine, a feast for the senses, and a surrender to the beat.

2004’s Carnaval theme is “All Life Moves in Rhythm,” and what better illustration of the energies I’ve been speaking of than the Carnaval logo of a mermaid at the top of a drum with drummers circling? If you give Astrology any credence, you’ve probably heard of the notion that we are on the cusp between two ages, the Age of Pisces and the Age of Aquarius. The mermaid archetype serves as a bridge between the ages, and not entirely coincidentally, also works as a symbol for the Divine Feminine. (Think of Imanja, the Goddess of the Waters, as yet another example.) Click for movie

In these dark days, when it often seems like the reigning god of the moment is Mars, God of War, it does us good to remember that there are other energies out there besides anger and aggression. Carnaval represents another way, a recognition of the interconnectedness of all life: the rhythms, cycles, the steady pulse of blood in our veins, and the recurring tides of the ocean.

Move in rhythm and surprising things can happen. When the Bay Area celebrates Carnaval, the day is devoted to a collective groove, a psychic unity that can unleash positive energy to help heal the wounds that our so-called leaders cause.

The King and Queen of Carnaval, like the King and Queen of alchemical symbology, represent the union of opposites, a balancing of yin and yang. The Divine Feminine emerges, not to seize one-sided power, but to meet and balance out the Masculine. It takes two to Tango, and in 2004 it is clearly time to dance.

Carnaval!