When priestesses walked, 2025

Glen Rogers  

The sacred feminine is deeply present in the large accordion book When Priestesses Walked, created by American artist and engraver Glen Rogers. This monumental work unfolds like a continuous visual narrative, almost an initiatory journey. The accordion structure evokes the passage of time and ancestral memory, inviting the viewer to walk alongside the priestesses evoked in the title. The book is not only an artistic object, but a ritual space, a place of transformation and reconnection with the Spirit. It is an invitation to rediscover the body, the earth, and water as places of revelation and feminine spiritual power.

Archetypal symbols that transcend cultures and civilizations emerge within the work: the triangle represents the sacred womb, the generative principle, the matrix of life. The spiral is inspired by the snake shedding its skin, a symbol of renewal and transformation, but also by the continuous movement of the ocean waves, the sacred waters of the cave, and the Adriatic Sea. The spiral embodies the continuum of life, cyclical and infinite. The tarantula recalls the tradition of the Taranta, the ecstatic dance practiced in Salento after the supposed bite of the spider. This ritual, linked to female liberation and healing, becomes a symbol of catharsis and transformation. In her works, art becomes meditation, memory, and invocation of the sacred feminine principle.