Post Mastectomy Dress #13  Messenger for the Morrígan & the Rainbow Goddess

Post Mastectomy Dress #13 

Messenger for the Morrígan & the Rainbow Goddess

This is a ceremonial garment. A mantle that acknowledges the transformations experienced while traveling to the realm of Death and returning to community. While this dress was made to mark the seven year anniversary of facing my own mortality, and returning after a rather remarkable and unexpected recovery, it may be worn by any person who has gone through a life changing experience.

This garment is not about fashion. It is about personal power, and the healing that happens in the interconnected realms of the ancestors and nature.

The Dress in situ on a one breasted dress form, at my solo exhibition, Preserved - Healing stories of Plants & Ancestors, in November 2020 at the Astoria Visual Arts Gallery, Astoria, Oregon.

The dress is embedded with many meaningful attributes and symbols:  

  • The Morrígan is an ancient Irish triple goddess, associated with both death and fertility, as well as protecting the land. She could shape shift, often taking the guise of the Crow, she also used crows as messengers. She is said to have sent prophetic dreams to individuals signaling their own death. The Crow is placed on the dress to honor the location of a mastectomy. 

  • The Rainbow Goddess in Greek Mythology was Iris - messenger for the the goddess Hera, an aspect of the divine feminine. Iris could travel to the the land of the dead and return. She used rainbows to travel between the various realms. 

        • The Rainbow Fire on the hem - Rainbows are riff with meanings -from Hope - to Peace, to Pride, and simply as a celebration of human variability. The Oregon Coast where I live is a temperate rainforest and the weather brings many many rainbows to the landscape here. Finely, obviously, my name, Iris, means rainbow.

  • The Moons - The moon phases circling the hem of the garment represent a month with two full moons, the second of which is called a blue moon.  This inclusion references the phrase “Once in a Blue Moon” indicating something rare or special. It is also the phrase written on the inside of the wedding rings of both my husband and myself.

  • The Fleur-de-lis - is a stylized yellow flag iris flower, Iris pseudacorus, and often used as a symbol for the Virgin Mary - especially in France. The Fleur-de-lis was included to honor my French Great Grandmother, Mary Edna Breault Lennon, who died in 1938 at age 49 from breast cancer. This dress was made at the time of my fiftieth birthday, which fell 7 years after being treated for, and surviving, advanced breast cancer myself. Including the Fleur-de-lis acknowledges how healing reverberates through time/space to include even the ancestors and those yet unborn. 

  • The fire in the pockets - around the world there are stories of how people got fire. Often the bringer of fire is physically marked in some significant way by their experience. To bring fire to the people is another way of saying to bring warmth, light, and wisdom to the people. The scars of the fire bringing experience are honorable and a reminder of self sacrifice for the good of the community. There are flames inside the pockets to indicate that the transformation of having journeyed to the realm of the dead, and then returning, is an act of bringing fire back to the community.

The cloth and colors chosen also have imbedded meaning:

  • The cloth is recycled, having first been used as a table cloth for a number of community celebrations and meals. It is organic cotton color grown gingham, which was grown and woven in the United States. (The cotton was bred and grown by plant breeder Sally Fox.)

  • All dyes were either foraged in my neighborhood wild areas, or grown at my home. The plants used each have personal meaning to me. Symbolizing - sweetness, ancestors, reckoning, joy, boundaries, community, and self care.

        • All of the cloth was first treated with a tannin derived from Fringecup plants, Tellima grandiflora - a small woodland flower native to the Oregon Coast. The colors other than grey were also mordanted with aluminum acetate.

      • Grey- cloth dipped in an iron solution (Tellima grandiflora  + FeSO₄)

      • Purple  - Madder root, then indigo. (Rubia tinctorium + Percicaria tinctoria ) 

      • True blue - from a natural indigo vat. (Percicaria tinctoria ) 

      • Blue-green - cloth treated with soy milk, then dyed with fresh leaf indigo using a salt method. (Percicaria tinctoria )

      • Green - Weld + Indigo (Reseda luteola + Percicaria tinctoria ) 

      • Yellow - Weld (Reseda luteola)

      • Orange - Weld + Madder (Reseda luteola + Rubia tinctorium )

      • Red - Queen Madder (Rubia tinctorium)

      • Black - Yellow Flag Iris root + Madder + Indigo + Iron (Iris pseudacorus +Rubia tinctorium + Percicaria tinctoria + FeSO₄ ) 

      • Nut Brown - Smoke Tree leaves (Cotinus coggygria)

To the wearer of the dress,

I invite you while wearing the dress to use it as an opportunity to acknowledge within yourself the ways you have been transformed by a serious challenge you have transversed, have healed from, and now embody. The line between the mundane and the sacred is defined by our intentions. 

May putting on the dress be a sacred act of empowerment and acknowledgment of the strength and wisdom you are now able to offer to your community because of a life changing event you have experienced.

Much Love -

Iris Sullivan Daire

Astoria Oregon 2021

*This was account was written to accompany the dress to Alabama, where it was featured in a natural dyed art garment fashion show, as part of the juried exhibition “Flights of Fancy” The exhibition was put on by the Central Art Collective in Mobile Alabama. I received a beautiful letter from the woman who wore it. I wear it only for special occasions, in which its ceremonial nature has a place.

Iris DaireComment