One message in show The Labyrinth of the Butterflies:

Taking our place in history requires us to fly;
to fly is to transcend the limits of the places assigned to us by patriarchy

THE LEGEND OF THE CHAIR

Once upon a time at one moment in the history of humanity on our planet, the symbol of the chair was created. Up until that moment, the chair as a symbol of a special place in the social framework did not exist. It was only known for its utilitarian use, which was born much earlier; from the depths of time we have known different forms of chairs to rest, to eat, to travel, to bury our dead in a seated position.

But at a time some 8,500 years ago, the chair transcended its pragmatic use to become a part of the symbolic universe. Curiously, the oldest figure that has been discovered that depicts a person seated on a throne (found in Catalhoyuk, Turkey) … is a woman!

The chair emerged as a symbol of the power of authority. At that time it was not abusive power for control and domination, to judge by other vestiges of culture from that remote epoch, which were preserved in the subsoil so that archeologists could discover them and tell us about a time during the history of humanity on our planet when not all power and authority was expressed in violence or domination. The sciences of excavation have not found instruments of war, torture or violence from that epoch. All of the vestiges that have been discovered to date are symbols of the fertility of life to recreate itself, of animals with special powers to fly, scepters of power and authority for guidance, and thrones for thinking of the common good and to guide the rest.

In those times, judging by the little evidence that there is, and our capacity to transcend the current experience of humanity, authority/power was not expressed as a hierarchy of some dominating others, but simply the recognition of a special place assigned by the community, and the voice of wisdom acquired through reflection on experience, which was capable of guiding the rest with advice.

Neither was this chair a pedestal to place one person so high that she became inaccessible to her community. On the contrary, it was placed there to serve her people, and so whoever sat there had to stay connected, without distancing herself so that she lost sight of the common good of the community that placed her there.

Neither was it a chair where only one person sat forever.  No, this concept that authority and power belong to just one person for a lifetime arose with the patriarchy, and it was the throne of kings "forever" until death separated them from their goods, their slaves, their women; in other words, during all their reign of brute force over their vassals, of hoarding goods and the exploitation of serfs and slaves.

No. In that remote time before kings and patriarchy, everyone encircled the chair (symbol of a dignified place in the world), and was represented by “she” who gave and nurtured life in her woman’s body.

Yes. That is how we hear it. It was SHE who appeared seated on the throne. It was SHE who was the symbol of authority/power of her community to guide it on the safe paths through the labyrinth of history of humanity on our planet.

But then there came a time when something happened. It was very serious, because there were wars, plundering and violence. And even the planet reacted, causing tremendous freezes in the north and tropical hurricanes, earthquakes, storms, the Flood… Everything became confused and the people became afraid of the power of nature.

Something happened that we are still ignorant of, but what is clear is that fear caused men to stop viewing nature as gods and goddesses who expressed themselves in their interaction with humans and to see them as "something else" separate from us. And the first nature that they "de-natured" was women’s bodies. SHE became The Other. And they thought they could also de-nature authority/power to make it a tool against “other” forces.

And they believed that they could do this without grave consequences and they distorted everything so that in the history of humanity on our planet the terrible dichotomy that has ever since separated us as unequal arose: “HE" and “SHE,” “US” and “THEM.”

And HE sat on the throne to hold it forever. And they changed its nature and meaning to symbols of authority/power: she was made to serve and he was served. They also distanced themselves from the rest of nature as if it were OTHER in order to use it to excess. And on top of everything OTHER, they invented laws and rules so that only they could hold the symbolic place of the chair.

They devised economic systems to live off the work of women and others, designed cultural systems to demarcate their paternity giving all the world their paternal surnames, coming from the father, the paternal grandfather and not the name from their own mothers from matrilineal clans.

They reinvented religions that buried the goddesses so that only one god emerged who had to be male, as if the deities had dichotomized sexes.

And since then, during these last 5,000 years the labyrinth of the life of humanity on the planet became one conflict without end where one reign after another emerges, succumbs and re-emerges. They rise, assume their place and destroy, and take with them all of us between the claws of their chairs and their blunders.

And they brought us to a barely quantum mathematics and science that has made of modern history a story about winners and losers as if there didn’t exist a majority that simply pays the consequences of the winners and even of the losers who never admit defeat and continue to try to hold the throne on the same terms as the others.

Using generalized war and violence to resolve differences divides the world into two unequal halves. And even women learned the game of authority/power to separate, control, dominate and with them, losing ourselves and even renouncing our ancestral place and our own path in the labyrinth of life.

This must stop! Something needs to start!   But where to start?

Rosa Parks did it. We can retake and hold on to the first thread of vitality of life to live it from our ancestral knowledge, as weavers at the loom. We can become excavators of lost paradigms as “Lucy” says in the show. We can return Mileva Maric to her dignified place in the history of women, which was stolen by institutionalized science, as the show does. We can break so many years of silence as Boc Dong Kim does, to speak about us, tell, name, to weep again for what has happened to us in history so that it is not repeated and then go out to celebrate our re-encounter with other women and men as the show does. We can de-program our bodies so that it is not technology that defines who we are and how to be, re-baptize ourselves with the names that return our own human and vital force of authority/power to guide and direct ourselves and to not die in the attempt.

We could… how to say it…? - We could do as Rosa Parks did and retake the chair and the original symbol of the chair. And play “musical chairs,” recovering the happiness of living that nurtures our hope, recovering the desire to play that gives us back our belief in humanity and life, recovering our capacity to move in a spiral where all of us are equal so that all women and men have a chance to sit in that chair, occupying our place in equality. And do not let the music stop!

(End) Wings of the Butterfly

This legend is dedicated to Adela Pita Morales (19… 1998), the last matriarch of the Bribri and Cabecar clans in Talamanca, of whom Tatiana Lobo said: “Adela returned my security and confidence in my own female nature, restored humility, brought comfort to my solitude and eliminated my cowardice.  There is knowledge that does not need literacy. There are caresses that do not need hands. We never discussed gender theories; she would not have understood them, but neither did she need them. Her sweet and strong presence alone was enough to confirm that equality between the sexes is possible.”