Matrix
“...in this enclosure there is enough love here even for the most unlovable of women...”
In Matrix by Lauren Groff, teenage Marie is booted out of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s court and forced to join a convent in England. Marie is a Plantagenet bastard, a rumored descendent of the fairy Melusine, and a retired child crusader from a family of raucous warrior women. The convent is a prison sentence, putting a body of water between her and her lifelong obsession: her beautiful cousin Queen Eleanor. She makes the most of her circumstances and over time rises to the position of abbess.
The abbey is crammed with oddballs and Marie reluctantly develops an overpowering sense of responsibility for them. It is a refuge for women who would be scorned or shunned in the outside world. Many, including Marie, are queer, neurodivergent, mentally ill, or generally fail at conforming to the social norms of the time.
Instead of giving everyone jobs they are bad at to make them more humble, as the former abbess did, Marie assigns work according to each sister’s talents. Goda, sorely lacking in social skills, brilliantly tends to the livestock. Insane Sister Gytha must be continuously distracted by illuminating manuscripts or she sees trees dancing at witches’ sabbaths. Duvelina was discarded by her noble family, but is the fastest at shelling peas. Nest is assigned to the infirmary, where she balances the body’s humors with foraged weeds and cunnilingus.
Although Marie is not a Christian at heart, she receives an apparition instructing her to build a labyrinth around the abbey. Marie envisions a maze of obstacles so complex and perilous that no outsider would be able to penetrate the abbey unless she desired it. Marie thinks, “...they could stay on this piece of earth where the place has always stood but her daughters would be removed, enclosed, safe. They would be self-sufficient, entire unto themselves. An island of women.”
She finds such an array of useful skills among the nuns that she has no need to bring in unwanted outsiders to construct the labyrinth. For instance, Sister Asta is put to work designing the labyrinth because she has a mind that is “clear and mechanical, seeing deep into the workings of things.” Yet Marie can’t help but wonder how Asta’s powerful but aloof mind could be misused in the outside world to create war machines. Instead Asta builds secret passages and machines to quickly clear the land.
The labyrinth becomes valuable as soon as it is completed. Marie has been buying lands around the abbey and growing its wealth, attracting the ire of some men in town who are threatened by her power. She hears of the plot with ample time to plan their defense. Asta sets traps in the labyrinth. The nuns capture the drunk interlopers and drag them back out.
As with the labyrinth, each time Marie executes the plans she receives from her visions it increases the wealth and security of the abbey. It also earns her more enemies, both within and without. Queen Eleanor sends Marie letters containing coded warnings suggesting that Marie has too much power for a woman. Although the bailiff Wulfild and the prioress Tilde resent the extra work and protest the new construction projects, no one is able to stand up to Marie.
In the age of the divine right of kings, Marie observes that the sisters “crave their own subjugation” and that “most souls upon the earth are not at ease unless they find themselves safe in the hands of a force much greater than themselves.” Marie draws the sisters’ resentment when she begins to deliver the mass and receive confessions, both roles that are traditionally assigned to men, but when given the opportunity to get Marie in trouble, no one does. At one point, Nest watches noble-blooded Marie doing manual labor and wonders if there are people with common blood who were born to be leaders. The ridiculous thought leads to a giggle fit.
The abbey is a world unto itself even as the world around it continues to disappoint. Leprosy ravages bodies. Queen Eleanor’s children wage war. Parents around Europe send their children to Jerusalem to fight a crusade. Powerful men above Marie inflict cruel punishments on the English people, not allowing them to bury their dead so that they rot in the streets. Marie shelters the sisters from what is happening outside of their walls. She fantasizes about “an invisible abbey made out of her own self, a larger church of her own soul, an edifice of self in which her sisters would grow as babes grow in the dark thrumming heat of the womb.”
In our current dark age, who hasn’t longed to build a labyrinth around the people they love to protect them from the world’s injustice? Billionaires are building underground bunkers and planning space colonies. Costco is peddling enormous buckets of apocalypse meals that never expire.
We may look for a far corner of the Earth where collapse can’t reach us or some modern-day noble to disrupt our doomed storylines with a deus ex machina. Most responses exclude the most vulnerable people, but they don’t have to. In the end we may find that no one is coming to save us and we must build our own labyrinths.
Tarot Spread
I’m spicing things up with a tarot spread! This spread is to help imagine your role in creating a more just world.
You right now
The role you are stepping into
A gift you can offer the world
Blocks to accessing or expressing this gift
How to remove this block
Resources that can help you embody this gift
Events and Offerings:
Gaza fundraiser - Palestinian people in Gaza are surviving a genocide and need our continued support. I’m still offering tarot/oracle readings with a suggested plant ally in exchange for $30 donations to various fundraisers. More info here.
The OK Den - You can find my infused oils at The OK Den in Hudson, NY all summer long! Hallie’s pop-up is full of eclectic artwork, vintage clothes, records, and otherworldly jewelry. Check out @theokden on IG for more info.
Love Notes:
I want to share this fundraiser from Leila Haseba Shaban, who lost 16 family members in Gaza. In return for your donation, you will receive a copy of the anthology Passport of Witness.
Be Your Own Healers is returning to NYC for Women’s Medicine Fest on August 4. Check out @beyourownhealers on IG to get your quarterly dose of cacao, breathwork, and sound bath magic. (I can’t go, but you should!)
The tarot spread above was inspired by a conversation with Marinka - you can check out her Substack here!
I keep coming back to that spread, it is so useful and grounding for me :)