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Glancing through this series, I am reminded how the suit of Staves or Wands develops the astral weaponry of the suit of Swords/Arrows into a martial art, or dance form.  This seemed fairly straightforward in the early cards of this suit, but by the time I reach Nine and Ten, it feels like too much is manifesting all at once on the earthly plane;  a bundle of imagined responsibility, almost a shut-down.
Never have I felt less creative.

Let the bundle go and lighten up!  Rohit’s interpretative notes suggest this also, as do the original Rider-Waite illustrations I worked from.

The wands are miniature trees.  Take just one, and look up it;  dance with it …

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NINE OF STAVES – from Rohit’s Notes, 2003

“Suspicion about Sita in Ayodhya ensures her banishment;  One of the meanings of this card is Authority and the burdens thereof.  Rama had assumed Kingship and did such a great job that it is still regarded as India’s golden age.  However, his sense of responsibility to public opinion caused him to banish Sita when slander had reached impossible levels. The king’s wife, like Caesar’s, had to be above suspicion.  What ought to be shown is Rama in all the splendour of his kingship having to take a decision to banish his wife, and never spending a happy moment since.  Sita need not even be present in the card;  this is Rama’s agony.”

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From Rohit Arya’s Book with the Deck

“Rama ruled over Ayodhya in a manner which has become synonymous in India with the Perfect Age; the rule of Rama is still invoked as an ideal to aspire towards.  Poverty was non-existent, and the people so content that Rama would wait every day at court for a person seeking justice!  In Rama the ancient dream – if a perfect king was found, the society would mirror his stature – found fulfilment.

“Yet there was one unhappy soul in this sea of contentment, and that was Rama.  For the old rumours about Sita and her virtue had begun again …  A perturbed Rama, for whom family reputation and the respect kings gained by example was paramount, gave in to public opinion.  He told Laxmana to abandon Sita in the forest near the ashram of Valmiki, so that she would be taken care of.  She was pregnant at the time, so Rama has been denounced ever since for being heartless.

Rider Waite 9 of Wands

“This tale is part of the Uttara Kanda of the Valmiki Ramayana, a segment long held by scholars to be spurious.  Nevertheless, the banishment of Sita has captured the imagination, and while it may not be true it is a (psychological) reality.  I also wanted one card to reflect the now traditional Rider-Waite imagery in Tarot, and when I read this sentence I could not resist it:  ‘Rama picked up a staff used during the yagna and, while leaning upon it, gave vent to his grief.’

“Interpretating the card:  Caution owing to vulnerability – face unjust criticism boldly.  Period of developing self awareness. The card of unsought and unwanted promotions and responsibilites;  wisdom and strength gained at great cost – inner resoluteness increases. Controlling oneself from misuse of power- realisation that one’s path is always going to be lonely.  Vigilant and alert attitude required.

“Shadow:  remembering past slights and fearing the future and that this new responsibility will turn out badly.  Being kicked upstairs.  Putting others first to the point of exhaustion. Feeling of, but not actual stagnation.  Tendency to retreat within, self absorbed, loner.  Old habits die hard.  Deferring to society’s norms.

“Are you fed up or exhausted with the current situation?  Why?
What can you do about it?”

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Sacred India Tarot, 9 of Staves – Rama’s agony and suspicion of Sita

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Jane’s Notes – 2015

In the Rider Waite deck, the Wands sprout small green shoots.  I could have included these in the above painting, but for some reason I left them bare.  Implicit in the rod or wand is its fertile potential.  Discover an undistracted sphere of authority or focus – then act on it.

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Lord Siva on his Tao

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Why is Sita’s banishment as Rohit says above, a “psychological reality”?

Perhaps one meaning is when our thoughts and grand ideas about things become brittle. When we trust, we walk on the water of life.  But when we think or listen to what ‘others’ say, we get heavy and sink.

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TEN OF STAVES – Rohit’s Notes, 2003

“Sita returns to earth’s womb, Rama is left alone.  The ten of wands has always a sense of oppression associated with it.  The card is liable to be complex as the brooding isolation that Rama feels is intensified here.  The earth has opened up to recover Sita, as she was unable to bear yet another demand for proof of innocence.  Rama has one more trauma to bear;  previously his wife was banished but alive in the forest, now he did not even have that straw to cling to.

“This event occurs at a great fire sacrifice, a Yagnya, so the positioning of the wands should not be too problematic.”

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From Rohit’s book with the Deck, 2011

“The Earth receives Sita – Now Rama and his judgemental subjects are in trouble.  The king has to perform yagnas – Vedic fire sacrifices – as a vital part of his intermediary between the gods and humans.  By law, a ruler could not officiate at yagnas without his wife being present;  it rendered the whole ritual futile.  Rama however, had famously sworn to have only one wife. In a polygamous society, this was breathtaking and a new paradigm of ethical behaviour, rapidly emulated by an impressed world.

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“The fidelity that saw the citizens bask in the supremacy of their king, has now become a problem for the maintenance of the social fabric.  The very foundation of ritha – cosmic harmony  – rests upon the kings of the earth performing yagnas.  Here is Rama, supreme amongst men, unable to hold yagnas.  Sita is still alive, and Rama will never have any other spouse.  She is also still banished.  It is an intolerable impasse.  The self satisfied littleness of mind in Ayodhya has made them the laughing stock of the world – a society with no yagnas!

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http://www.templepurohit.com/yajna-or-yagna-sacred-fire-sacrificial-rituals-in-hinduism/

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“A desperate compromise is sought.  If Sita would agree to just one more ordeal by fire to prove her chastity … A distraught Sita, never doubting Rama’s unswerving love, nevertheless has had enough.  She calls upon Bhumidevi Gaia – the Earth Goddess who is her mother – to rescue her from this unceasing torment.  The earth swallows her while the very gods are appalled, witness to Rama’s utter desolation.

“In a reading:  Overwhelmed – too much of everything;  superabundance of talents, which have become burdensome.  Next set of challenges after success.  Drop some things, lighten the load … Period of intense concentration and focus cannot be maintained for long.  Loneliness at the top, but it is the top.

“Shadow: Oppression and taking on too much – terrible deadline pressures, and too eager to please.  Misuse of power, making unreasonable demands.   You cannot do so much. Accept it.  Let go of some things, delegate others, and forget the impossible and implausible.”

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Sacred India Tarot Ten of Staves – The earth receives Sita

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Jane’s Notes – 22 October 2003

Finished the Rama picture.  It is not being done according to the “maestro tempo”, but to the whim of my personal unfolding.  Each month or so, the India Tarot moves forward a jot or jolt, and from time to time produces a picture which is about my own discoveries.

In this one, Rama’s grief has sunk underworld with the fay and loyal Sita whom he unjustly suspected. She arises through his bones, watery, into the Fire of the Yagna Sacrifice – and from that same fire is sprouted the man in an orange sky of flame upon a violet crystal landscape.  She ascends through the sacrifice, and he grieves, he feels.  The bundle of ten red Wands crosses behind his upper spine and weighs upon his heart;  this is humanity having to learn by experience.  It is also the irrepressible arising of the dew, the spring waters, as the heart connection transfigures – the white around Rama and on the Wands.  The membrane between Rama and Sita is a turgid dark green, signifying impurities and jealousy in the desire nature.  But you can see that the pure waters are impacting up his lower spine by osmosis.

The earth in fact has opened like a lake, and She – like the lady of Shalott – rests within it.  The man looks elsewhere, he is speared and crossed through with his individuation, but has not yet glimpsed beyond his own container.

In the previous card, the Nine of Wands, he stands on guard with self righteous dignity, wearing a purple mantle;  this violet colour is now the rocky landscape in which he sits semi-naked.

For the Sacred India Tarot, their interpretation of the Wands is the Intellect.  In the Nine – I am now following the classic Rider-Waite designs – he grasps one of the Wands of a fence, to use it as a spear.  In the Ten, this one becomes the burden of the entire Ten which he believes he carries.

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Tree of Life with three Gunas, showing vedanta and western traditions

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Kabbalistically, Ten of Wands is Malkuth of the suit – the nitty gritty reality – just as Nine of Wands is Yesod, the self image or cloak.  In fact, with the possible exception of Three of Wands (Ravanna rejecting wise counsel) for Binah/Understanding, all the Wands I have drawn work well in the ten Sefiroth of the Tree – about which I thought not at all, in the doing.  So ten are done – a whole Tree.  The Court cards are the four worlds, and will begin with the Page of Wands as the Ashwin solar twins – the divine healers.

On the other hand there are multiple levels to see in this Ten of Wands painting, for turning to “Stage 12 in Alchemy, Multiplication” I see that the upright and stationary wands in the Nine all have this transformative and incendiary potential into the orange sky light of the Ten.  So the Ten contains a great release potential.

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Correspondence/Feedback;  Rohit, December 2003

“The Nine of wands is remarkable, we have broken out of the cliche of Rama always with a bow.  This is what he must have really looked like, the power and authority he radiates is terrific.

“The Ten is also unusual and creative in conveying so many layers of story at one time.  There is Rama in the kingly posture that conveys his burden of kingship and responsibilities, the arrows that mark his nature and form rays around him in his role as a solar deity;  there is the lost Sita, sinking into the ground beneath him – that action cost him his moral footing though ethically it was an impeccable decision.  It is one of the most psychologically complex and layered cards Jane has done.”

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Sagittarian inscape

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For other Sacred India Tarot posts, look under Recent Posts, Search, or Archive of All Posts in the title bar.

Rohit Arya

Rohit Arya is an Author, Yogi and Polymath. He has written the first book on Vaastu to be published in the West, {translated into five languages} the first book on tarot to be published in India, co-authored a book on fire sacrifice, and is the creator of The Sacred India Tarot {82 card deck and book}. He has also written A Gathering of Gods. He is  a corporate trainer, a mythologist and vibrant speaker as well as an arts critic and cultural commentator. Rohit is also a Lineage Master in the Eight Spiritual Breaths system of Yoga. 

Earlier posts about the deck, including the first 15 Major Arcana archives are in http://aryayogi.wordpress.com   – (look in his Archives May 2012 and June 2012.) The deck is copyrighted (c) 2011 to the publishers, Yogi Impressions Books pvt, and available also on Amazon and internationally.

Jane Adams

My adventure invites fellow travellers.  I am a poet, an artist and a seer.  I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is  a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

All original art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C3TIr2bBo0 – Barenboim’s noble rendering of the Appassionata Sonata

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http://www.lvbeethoven.com/Famille/FamilyTree-Minona.html#Midi

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Beethoven profile – xerox of a lost sketch

In my earlier post, More Sketches of Beethoven, I described a dream I had many years ago, that I tried to draw his daughter, who lived with him somewhere underneath Vienna.  It seemed at the time to parallel his efforts at composition, a titanic process of inspirational song, rain-soaked notebooks and hours or months of cutting, shaping and refining – it did not come easy for him.

I brought from my dream’s dark-room an impression down the years, of a child with a wide face and a fringe.  She was his child, or she was his soul – he looked through her eyes.  I met him in my dream, and we made an agreement.  That is all I remember – and the heart breaking toil of trying to portray her.   In those days I drew many children, capturing their essence in sometimes half an hour or less.   Not so, with this one!

I decided to try to reconstruct the dream – particularly when “Edwardian Piano” informed me that there was a daughter – it is said her mother, Josephine Brunswick, raised her as Minona Stakelberg. Josephine’s sister Therese alone was in the secret, which she kept until her grave.  On the website (see top of page under the Barenboim video), you can hear a couple of Minona’s Ecossaises for the piano.  It is a pity that they are played in  ‘electronic’ style.  I can imagine their grace and humour on an old Broadwood.

With sepia photos or daguerrotypes, I guess my way along, like a palaeontologist.  The photo looked at once familiar.  Her face in it is broad, yet heart shaped;  she looks a determined young woman.  In the other photo, she is an older woman.  She probably lost her teeth, and her nose looks longer.  I began with Neidl’s likeness of Beethoven, nearest to the dark child I see in my mind:

Engraving of Beethoven by J.Neidl from a drawing by G.E.Stainhauser von Treuberg in 1800

The young Beethoven – after the Neidl engraving

Minona’s face is rather thin here, which draws on information from both the photos. In old photos, much of the bone structure detail is blurred.  It is said her looks were dark and “Spanish”, like Beethoven’s.  My drawing doesn’t show much family likeness, but an exploration of this kind might touch unknown factors;  I do not know!

Josephine Brunswick, her mother

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Finally I began work on this:

Beethoven and his natural daughter

 …  and it is not finished, and cannot be, but is starting to speak.

There are mysteries between ourselves as human beings and our hidden continents and the things we grieve and share and conceal and stumble with, which can only be recognised and touched upon … beyond words.  We touch the hem of the robe.  The story’s pressure through my dream was the character of Beethoven’s illegitimate daughter, and how this condition made her strong, made her hear him, and grow up beyond her years.  This, like tidal currents in the sea which enter one another, has resonance.

Grief is sharp and alive with colour as in a painting, and so is joy;  and life is born through dying, born through dying and letting go … again and again and again.

Photo of Minona Stakelberg

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Anton Schindler’s Impression of Beethoven at the piano:
“What the Sonata Pathetique was in the hands of Beethoven (although he left something to be desired as regards clean playing) was something that one had to have heard and heard again, to be quite certain that it was the same already well known work.  Above all, every single thing became, in his hands, a new creation, wherein his always legato playing, one of the particular characteristics of his execution, formed an important part.

“In his lessons, Beethoven taught: always place the hands on the keyboard so that the fingers do not rise any more than is strictly necessary, for only with this method is it possible to create a tone and to learn how to ‘sing’.  He hated staccato playing, especially in the execution of passages; he called it ‘finger dance’ or ‘leading the hands into the air.’

“The pieces which I myself heard Beethoven execute were, with few exceptions, always quite free of tempo limitations:  a tempo rubato in the truest sense of the word, according to the demands of the contents and situation without, however, the slightest tendency to caricature.  It was the clearest and most comprehensible declamation … as perhaps can only be elicited from his works.

“His older friends, who carefully followed the evolution of his spirit in every aspect, assure me that he developed this style in the first years of the third period of his life, and that he turned completely away from his earlier manner of playing with fewer nuances.  From this, it is clear that his urge towards discovery had already found the ways and means to open up with confidence the portals of the mystery to both laity and initiated. 

“He wanted the Quartets to be performed in the same manner as the Sonatas, for they paint states of mind, as do the majority of his Sonatas.”

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Allegri quartet rehearsing, 1988

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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2015. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

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Here are three sketches I did recently, feeling the pressure at the gates of Europe of thousands, millions of individuals, who seek in desperation, a safe place for their young, and for their families.

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In this land of many racial types and communities, the Star, the Cross and the Crescent thrived.  Until the civil war, Syria enjoyed a secular vitality, largely Sunni Islamic, with remnants of the old Jewish community in Aleppo, and deep anchors of orthodox Antioch Christianity.

Pondering the refugee crisis and cultural cross-fertilization, the light with the dark, the waves crossing waves of man’s inhumanity to man … is it seeding for generations to come, a paradoxical enrichment to the human gene pool?

What pains and pangs of birth are these?  History is peppered with tidal migrations and the violent forces which propel them.  Is there any actual limit or lack of space within the human heart?

Through depth of meaning, we find survival and adaptation. It may help children caught up in adult war to survive, for we are all connected through resonance; it directs us where to go, and what we can or might do here and now.  Meanings are not only spiritual, religious or collective. Meanings are social, intimate and personal – the evolving integrity of an individual’s interconnecting place and purpose in society.

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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2015. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

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Buddha, 2008

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This post contains Rohit Arya’s inspiring reflection on the Ashwins.  Through last week’s dark events in Paris which bring close to home, hearth and empathy, the shocking daily reality in many lands, I got some uplift with his writing, and I hope so do you.

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Ashwin gentlemen

Rohit’s Notes (2003)

“I have searched diligently for any sort of artistic representation of the divine twins and failed.  It is a disgrace actually, that no such representations exist.  The attached article will convey the feel and tenor of the solar twins. We are breaking fresh ground here, the first representation of the Ashwinis. The story of the Rishi floating on the log and thus saved from Cosmic Flood by the Ashwinis could give us our link with wands.”

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Ashwini Kumara – the Swift Gods of Light –
From an earlier Article by Rohit Arya

“The Ashwini twins are Vedic gods who were once held in high esteem but have been all but forgotten. They were however, the prototype for the notion of Kumara the eternal youth, which is how both Skanda and the Buddha would be represented in future sculpture.

“It is known to a few, that the Awhwinis were the first physicians, doctors to humanity as well as the gods.  They were one of many Solar deities in the Vedas; many of their attributes were taken over by Vishnu when his cult by a process of osmosis, engulfed all the solar gods in his vast embrace.

“The Ashwinis seem to be the most energetically joyful of all the gods known to man. They hurtle through the cosmos in a dizzying effervescence of joy. They are the lords of speed, the swift rivers, the falcons of light, the riders of the fleet horse, agile and brilliant as Rig Veda says.  Speed is their keynote.  They bounce off the walls of heaven with a rush of energy, like young colts.  They are the most dazzlingly handsome personages in the universe, and they know it – ‘swift footed lords of bliss, much enjoying’. Later stories would elaborate on them as sensual gods. In some versions they marry jointly, Savitri the daughter of Surya the Sun God.  She was nominally supposed to marry Soma, lord of the moon and the sacred drink, but the Ashwins were much more handsome and cut a spectacular dash!  Other myths tell that they married the ten rays of the Sun, Surya’s daughters … But they had no time to lech like other gods.  Savitri was the only one who could keep up with their rapidity.

Sukra – the Jyotish deity Venus. This illustration is in Andrew Foss’s new book on Vedic astrology, Yoga of the Planets (out soon).

“The Ashwins were not effete dandies, careering across the cosmos in solar powered Ferraris.  They were that rarest of heroes, intellectuals who could act decisively and swiftly. They were described as ‘effectual in action, the powers of movement, fierce-moving in their paths:  they embodied the Samurai dictum – ‘to think and to act are one and the same‘.  They are the power of movement itself, so speedy and firm were they perceived to be. They used their great knowledge to help the gods – which was appreciated – and also to alleviate the sufferings of Humanity – which was not. Like Prometheus they had to face an angry Indra, leader of the gods, who punished them by depriving them of the right to drink the sacred Soma, which conferred strength and immortality on the gods. Soma was only too pleased; they had cost him a wife. However, the angry gods could not punish the Ashwins – they moved too fast to be caught, and they were no pushovers. Nobody knew the extent of their strength, nor wished to risk finding out.

Red horse by the sea, 2008

“The Ashwins did not care too much about being excluded from the sacred drink.  They were caught up in their experiments and always on the move, as an active life principle. They made an iron leg for the warrior named Vispala who lost his in battle.  They were physicians and worked tirelessly at their craft.  The jealous humans said they had forfeited divine honours by associating too much with humans!  In later medieval times, the physician’s job was regarded as greatly polluting as it interfered with the evil Karma which produced the disease – a cruel doctrine. It is greatly to the Ashwins’ credit that they chose compassion over the approbation of their fellows, and continued to do what they had always done. They healed countless numbers of the lame, and restored sight to many who were blind – an apt action for the Lords of the Light.  The similarities with events in Palestine many thousands of years later are also obvious.  One of the Ashwins’ most coveted boons was to restore youth and vigour to the aged and decrepit. That might explain why they did not need the Soma like the other gods did.

“The Rishi Chyavana was old, feeble and ugly. Constant immersion in meditation had covered his body with vegetation until an anthill arose around him. The beautiful Sukanya thought his still visible eyes were glow-worms and poked them out with a stick, to capture them. Instantly the people of that region were cursed with terrible pain; the only way out of this was to marry her off to the sage she had wronged.  Sukanya accepted the grotesque situation as being fair – the blind sage needed someone to care for him. One day however, at the riverbank (a liminal, threshold site) Sukanya observed the Ashwinis frolicking in the water, and sighed for her lack of such joys.

“The Twins had a rare moment of lust, and propositioned her, confident in their youth and beauty. But she rebuked them severely and abashed them.  Yet they still had their hats in the ring, and offered to cure her husband of blindness and senility, and give him a handsome form like their own.  This was the catch: she must pick out her husband correctly from the identical trio, or agree to go with them.  Sukanya consulted her husband who decided to teach the presumptuous gods that he may be old and blind, but did not become a rishi for nothing.  When they emerged from the water in which the gods dipped the old man, she instantly recognised her husband through his instructions; the gods do not blink, sweat, cast shadows or leave footprints – and the human was easily found out.

Secret dakini oracle 42, Wave of Bliss. Note the longboat under the crest.

“The Twins were sporting about it, and Chyavana, grateful for his rejuvenation, instructed them in an esoteric part of the Vedic sacrifice that even the gods had forgotten.  Armed with this new knowledge, the Ashwinis marched back into the divine company and traded off the right to drink Soma for this new rite in the fire sacrifice.  They came full circle – rejected for their love of humanity and restored by it too.

“Some have mistakenly translated their name to be Horsemen, from Ashwa the horse they ride. The horse as a symbol of prana indicates the Ashwinis’ perfect control over the breath, as well as their dazzling speed. The word Ashwini is derived from a root word which means ‘to fill everything’. One of the twins pervades the universe with Light, the other with Moisture – another indication that they were proto-Vishnu, ‘he that pervades’.

(Diagrams of solar-fusion which is set to replace nuclear fission by 2050 as our main energy source, and could totally revolutionise the human world-view and society,  See this link: https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/perhaps-fission-is-the-learning-curve-to-fusion/

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“In another story, they rescued a great sage from a flood that threatened to drown his learned life. The Ashwins sent him a log to clamber up onto and float around until realising who was responsible for this providential intervention.  Then they appeared before him, blessed him and instructed him in spiritual matters.

big wave near Marloes, west Wales

“The Twins were heralds of the dawn, lords of the fleetingly transient state between night and dawn, again an attribute of their great speed. This places them firmly as liminal or threshold deities, guardians of sacred and rare times when higher levels of consciousness may be accessed.  This peculiar aspect of their potency is acknowledged in verses where the Ashwinis are addressed as the children of the sun, of the earth, of the waters, and even as sons of the submarine fire.  All are conjunctions, especially the horizon where one space interacts with another, forming a natural threshold, and are key areas for the Ashwini to act.  They are the great facilitators of transition, but only to the Light.  They simply do not have the time for anything else.

They give that impelling energy for the great work which, having for its nature and substance the light of the Truth, carries man beyond the darkness.

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“The Ashwinis represent a glorious phase of Indian culture, and there are very few gods who are so reverberant with light. They are action incarnate, joyful graspers of life and laughter, quick to act and determined in their courses, intelligent and compassionate. The thrill they get out of being alive, is magnificent; it is a great pity that India has lost the ability to be in sympathy with such an exultant use of talent, ability and power. This is life lived to the fullest, to delight in action and glory in the mind … ‘Take joy in the Word, the holders in the intellect, by the luminously energetic thought’ …

“It was a sad time when India forsook the speedy gods of Light for more sedate worship.

“In the Vedic constellations, the Ashwins are in Aries, the sign of the New.

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“In a reading:  Light: Creative beginnings – difficult to pin down – potent card for spiritual breakthroughs.  Shift to higher, more spiritual approaches to life … Honest and straight-forward talkers … Always shooting off in a new direction, may need restraint.  Enthusiastic team worker, but may not always follow team policy.  Lots of travel indicated.  
Shadow: Instability and misdirected energy … ominously they can become passionate followers of dubious leaders, the hitler-youth sort of personality, fall into trances of admiration for peculiar people and weird ideas.
This is the moment to stay on track, not veer off to interesting sidelights.” 

From Rohit’s  book with the deck

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Sacred India Tarot – Pages of Staves: The Ashwis

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Rohit’s feedback to the Card, 2003:  “My enthusiasm for the Ashwins is unbounded.  I cannot recall feeling so excited about something.  No change at all.”

wave yantra pattern

From Jane’s Journal/channeling in October 2003: 

“Last night while watching The Omen on TV, I drew for IndiaTarot the Ashwini Kumara from Solar Joy upon a foaming white horse of the wave. They reach down a great white arm to the struggling sage of humankind adrift with his log at sea whose arm is feebly raised, like that of a baby. The Lord Sustainer Sanatkumar out of Vishnu’s endless dharma comes swift with the dawn and gathers him. The Lord Sustainer Sanatkumar overtakes the destiny of the rolling log, with that of the cosmic Law.

“In the Psalms and Songs of David, uplift from wickedness is eternal throughout the many forgotten races of man.  The rod and staff built into our infancy in the cosmic deep brings us through, again and again, until our own IAM is that:  the Arm of the Psalm.

“… What requires completion will be done, be assured, and it is a waste of time and energy to attempt what is assigned to other time and place.  Have confidence in the work. Service to the Hierarchy enlarges access by guided acceleration, and guarantees clear sighted fulfilment. See the Horse of the Ashwins, whose heavenly wave pearls and takes along with it the surfing Wand. Be not afraid. Surf the Father/Mother, surf the Son: surf I Am – be this your AIM!  IAM AEOLIAN and I play your strings.  IAM your wind, the Hebrew H or wind-door.  Why AMI this?  because you love what IAM.

“Symbols are patterns of vibration, like the Chladni figure on a glass, like the sand on the beach patterning the waves. They are not abstract, they are representations as concrete as anything you believe in the material world. … Every part and atom of the teaching is an actual jewel, a vein of rock, a garment, a body, a breath, a blessing. Sacred geometry is representational … the shoulder blades, the wings of your ageless archetype.”

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Jane’s Notes Today 2015

Rohit’s “speedy gods of Light”!  Indeed, our “sedate forms of worship” in the world when they become sad and constraining, can lead to cancerous affiliations.

What is the worship?  Perhaps a spontaneous response to the miraculous mystery of our life and being.  Self-importance collapses in such moments, forgetting what it had to say. There is a deep human need for ritual and ‘the music’: to come close.  When the heart is deeply moved it likes a little ceremony.

The Sanskrit for the worship or spiritual instruction is “upadesa” – to draw near.  We bring to the worship our infinite variety of needs and archetypes.  I was never able to establish a regular habit of prayer or meditation, but I respect those who do.  Spontaneous offerings arising within the soul – sometimes wisely and sometimes unwisely –  are my worship and my daily bread, through raincloud, sun and winter.

Worship may be a steady practice, or it may fountain, touching base in synagogue, cathedral, temple or on prayer mat alike. The paradox of worship is that it is a deeply private and yet communal power. When inflated with politics and unbalanced accumulations of wealth, it gets trapped into every extremity which human nature is capable of, and is lost.

What can I do with my values?  Change starts here at history’s crossroads, in us each as individuals through our deltas of extended family.  Change begins within each atom, and imperceptibly at first, begins to overcome the molecular infrastructures.  The political leaders cannot do it, for they are locked within the competing forms.  It is my responsibility and yours, to live what we are given.

For me, the wonder in the Ashwins is:  the weakened sailor moves his subconscious left arm by an effort of will – and to it descends in joy and glory the Will – the powerful helping hand of the divine Solar Twins.   We are so much more than we think we know.

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Horses by the sea in west Wales, 2007

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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

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This post waited in my Drafts for some considerable time!  I was kept busy with my book of the Tarot Arcana (from which this writing arose), and with finding out, and with living. Now I recall the place of rest: shabat shalom … and baruch, the blessing.

Our dear old friend Issy Benjamin “left the market place on Sunday evening 25 October, and has gone home. Heaven is home and earth is the marketplace. We are in constant passage between the two (African proverb).”  He was nearly ninety.

The Star, the Cross and the Crescent!  (See the vimeo above).  Develop in the inner and outer life the golden seed – each of the middle eastern prototypes holds my deep affiliation, life-effort and love.  As agonizing as the conflict at present is, so shall it one day flower and unite humankind.

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Script of altar, bird, torch in the Trinosofia, meaning ‘the body of the wise man shall be concealed’

Great love embraces the tall white hall of Issy’s shul, where I went for sabat shalom. Hidden behind an angle there was a skylight, and this reminded me of a dream I once had, in which were windows cut through the ceiling to Adonai – in the shapes of the Hebrew letters – through them you may talk to god without intervention or interference or screen of speech.  Why?  Because those apertures from above and below are cut through stone, the shape of the language and its covenant.  Nothing else but the Law, the cosmic Torah, can be spoken or heard through them.  And so it is with all languages through which God spoke – Arabic, Persian, Phoenician, Egyptian, Sanskrit – our origin.

Always go from where you are right now, because access to the sacred architecture is a given;  it is not seen all at once, it grows on you as soon as you surrender your nature to the joy of the gift.

When a soul literally sheds the physical embodiment, he or she is present in any time and space right now, to tune in with.

Hexagram, from Keith Critchlow’s ‘Islamic Patterns’

When the centre is open, the six directions through my core are simultaneous.  Turning to face them, is something I should remember and not forget during the day. The KABOD, the glory of God has this private stealth, and may be rediscovered at any moment. The expression ‘The chosen people’ may derive from what we choose to meet each other with – the scroll we unroll and open to each other in the eager reading of the Book.  It derives from ‘choosing’ to connect with Issy and with other souls now beyond the box of naming, yet vital in their essence.  There is an intimacy of the emerald table – as above, so it grows below:  the currency ascends through the descent.

I feel and endure the descent, but later on like yeast it rises and leavens the loaf, spreading it far and wide.

My solar atom is a weathercock – a cube of space;  the six directions N E W S and up and down;  the holy hexagon, the cube of Solomon, a metaphysical spatial reality.  As soon as I am aware of it, I know my purpose, and gently it flows into concentric raindrop circlings of humankind:  I know it and I become still.   I become still not with my intention which is a confused and muddy pool, but as soon as I am aware of the grace flowing in and out.  Then I am in my natural shul.

I was picturing Issy there, in his usual seat, with his white shawl wrapped around him, and his sparkling joyous gravity.  I feel he was an architect in the medieval flowering of sacred geometry and alchemical science, when Jewish and Islamic sages worked together. When – like him – we are called back into the Scroll, we are all the names that were ever given us on earth – and so we have no particular one, we are nameless!

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When I ask where and what is God, and love of God, God happens when a tabernacle opens.  When Yeshua stood with his friends on the mountain, their tabernacles opened to each other, and they KNEW.  The place of rest is the crystal receiving-set through which the Greater Mystery pulses.  In the silence the sages come to life:  the holy mountain.

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In the Tarot, Key Seven awakens this knowledge and response.  It fields and fences the Magician’s ‘house’ or BEIT with CHETH the enclosure.  It takes a while to tap the portal;  but this morning again it stood open – it flows through here.

The Seventh Arcanum rests within the sense of expansion.  It is a seven pointed star.  The Seventh Arcanum reminds me now that each Tarot Key is a holy transmission, a contemplative and living silence.  The enigmatic image releases a quantum of shabat shalom baruch:  a commitment.  The prayer does not repeat;  it is new born.

For Issy:  Go Well!

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How to make a seven point star – with the 51-degree angle in the Druid’s Cord

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Jacobs Ladder – the Four Worlds, Aziluth (Divine), Beriah (Creation), Yetzirah (Formative and Psyche) and Assiyah (Material world)

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Alchemy is child’s play, God’s game in the garden.  The human physical and existential organism is wondrously subtle and infinitely textured, more to be breathed, yearned and died with, than to be figured out.  It always drew the shy and enquiring alchemical minds to the mystery, like bees to the flower.

Here are some playtimes and discoveries around Basil Valentine’s “Golden Tripod” in the Hermetic Museum 17th century.  They dropped into my delighted journal for poem-making, a number of years ago, and asked for a little revision now.

1955 playing by the sea

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Alchemical Journal, 26 February 2002

The definition Paul Foster Case gives for the “Incombustible Oil” of alchemy is: “It cannot be found in the animal kingdom because there its nature is too completely veiled. It is incombustible because no fire can burn the essence of fire. It is mineral because it is the essential substance for whatever is mined.”

The incombustible oil is the living fire itself, the pure First Matter. It is only when the lower mercurial imp gets hold of it that it thickens and dies. If a Narcissus beholding the pure spring – spirit, soul and salt balm – weds it to himself and becomes ‘so proud he hardly knew himself’,  un-firing oils of pride and small purpose are bred – a cold bed.

We should sing and eat the First Matter and digest it and let it pass through our gut – it is not enough to merely read or think it. Sound vibrates into wave patterns. Thoughts are things. Spiral, whorl, desert storms and water pass through sand; ripples coalesce, grains are atoms, sand dunes travel like stars. You can tap the sand on a membrane or whisper to it, forming patterns:  the Glory of the World?

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1955, girl with lighthouse

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Alchemical apperception is a terrific amount of beauty to hold. When tired or too high or tense or worried or complaining, the third eye doesn’t operate. It needs nourishment and daily practice. The amount of beauty in Aleph breaks and shatters a conventional organism;  the whole cellular body must change, to confect it.

Blood carries the substance which spirals through our bodies – the distilled moisture of the moon to marry to the light of the sun.

The One Thing, heart’s desire, spirals towards us by gravitation – a mental power (condenser). Self AWARENESS directs gravitation. Without this, firmly planted, every effort or prayer is flimsy. Key One in the nuptial chamber ‘flows’ through the Tower of alchemy as gold and steel. With consciousness, an adept commands gravitation.

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Recall childhood: Daniel the donkey in the Yorkshire moors, the smell of the sack tied round him in winter; and the Doctors beach near Hartland in North Devon: hot sun, great  rocks like up-ended books, sea-channels, the taste of joy, hunger and thirst, a piece of cheese for lunch, a scorching sunburn all day long between my shoulder blades. Recall some of the flavours in your own …

The desire nature is situated at the well of the throat; the core of human sexual desire is  here, as well as hunger or longing. Within the belly it manifests. To change the copper into white, raise it to the moon centre behind the root of the nose and by creative imagination (key Three, Empress) to the level of clear recollection (key Two, Priestess).

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Our gold is the same as our Stone – the stars of our inner heart, invisible to the eye’s external seizure.

Its female principle is the subconscious power to be fertilised and to multiply.

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In the East it is said that without his shakti, Siva the Purusha cannot move or manifest. The King is stillness. His Queen is the centrifugal life-giving force of that stillness. The King is silence. His Queen is the sound-wave. The King is water. His Queen is the ripple of a breeze, a wave or tempest.

The spirit, the soul and the astral correspond to the three lower Worlds, whose holy place of meeting is Malkuth of Beriah, Tifareth of Yetzirah and Kether of Assiyah. Here the anointing takes place.

Reflect on thought forms, ways of thinking, of feeling and relationship: responsibility with the sharp edges. Be clear.

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In Svetasvatura Upanishad it says: Even as fire is not seen in wood and yet by power it comes to light as fire, so Brahman in the universe and in the soul is revealed by the power of OM – primordial sound. The soul is the wood below that can burn and be fire, and OM is the whirling friction-rod above. Prayer is the power that makes OM turn around, and then the mystery of God comes to light.

God is found in the soul when sought with truth and self sacrifice, as fire is found in wood, water in hidden springs, cream in milk, and oil in the olive.

There is a Spirit who is hidden in all things, as cream is hidden in milk, and who is the source of self knowledge and self sacrifice.

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And now my digest of the story in Basil Valentine’s “Golden Tripod”.  I put the Mage’s words into free verse.  The story begins:

“Take a quantity of the best and finest gold – the best of your inner treasure – and separate it into its component parts (Four Worlds of the tree of Life), by love of the Art. Do it the way an anatomist dissects the human body. Very carefully, change your gold back into the currency before it became the world’s gold: go upstream.

“You shall find the seed – beginning, middle and end – from which our gold and its female principle are derived. You shall discover the pure and subtle spirit, the spotless soul and the astral salt and balsam.  When these three are united, we may call them the mercurial liquid: Hermetic mind.

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“This water was examined by Mercury, found by him in his excitement to be pure and spotless, and espoused by him as his wife. Of the two was born an incombustible oil; Mercury became so proud he hardly knew himself. He put forth eagle feathers, devoured the slippery tail of the Dragon (South node) and challenged Mars to battle.

“Captured by harsh planetary aspects, our Mercury was jailed by Vulcan, smith of the metals, until a woman should liberate him. All the planets led by Saturn, agreed he was a scoundrel and must be destroyed and burnt. Vulcan performed the execution. But the beautiful Moon appeared in the sky, all attired in silver and waters, and pleaded heartbreakingly for her husband the Sun – the secret Fire – trapped in Vulcan’s prison through conjunction with crafty Mercury. He, the fire in the oil, could not glow or burn. Their child could not warm the heart and grow. Lady Moon, like our Mother Isis, pleaded for her dismembered Osiris.

“Venus too arrived, in her most beautiful dress, and wheedled with Vulcan in the Chaldean tongue – language of astrologers – “A woman will liberate the prisoner from planetary deadlock, sweeten the aspects so they yield!” – But Vulcan (her husband in the Greek mythology) turned to her his deaf ear.

1957 Flora, after Botticelli

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“Then the skies opened. Out poured a mighty beast; with many thousands of young. Like a tidal wave it drove Vulcan before it, swept him forth; and opening its great mouth swallowed also Venus its own fair mother. It roared: ‘I am born from her. Then she received into herself my seed and filled the Earth with it. My mother and my wife the same, her soul is devoted to mine, of one bond; so I must eat, replenish my own with her blood.’”

1957, theseus slays minotaur

The blood is the soul. The creature is born, weds and consumes the matrix, the One materia. Its voracious offspring followed it into ‘a certain chamber’, eating up all the incombustible oil also, digesting it with the greatest ease and propagating into every part of the world.

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“The learned men and elders of the violet land all gathered, perplexed. Then a Great Mage came forth into their circle. Is he the higher Mercury, quicksilver of the wise? He wore the girdle of life – the serpent swallowing its tail – around his loins, snowy locks, silver beard and crown of elven jewels. His feet were bare, and his words penetrated to the depth of the human soul.

He summoned silence, then spoke:

“Awake, and open your eyes to behold light
where before they beheld darkness.
Two stars God-given lead men to wisdom.
Gaze upon them steadily
and follow their lights to the secret of knowledge.

“The bird Phoenix from the sunny fiery South at high noon (midheaven)
plucks out the mighty beast’s heart from the East at dawn (ascendant).
Give the beast from the East wings
that it feel itself the same as the bird from the South.”

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The tight right-angle aspect or planetary ‘square’ is eased by unifying the character of the protagonists. Like the Bird of Light, the animal nature must allow itself to be destroyed to be reborn. It must dissolve and meld with spirit at the point where they converge. The spirit needs the power to manifest that is in earth, the dreaming earth.

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The Mage Continued …

“The animal from the East must lose its lion’s skin and wings.
Then it must plunge in primordial salt tears of the vast ocean
and emerge thence in renovated beauty.

“Plunge your volatile mind, your demons and distractions
in a deep spring whose waters never fail.
Their Mother is hidden within the spring.

Let them become as she.
Let them be born of Three,
of spirit, soul and salt, thrice distilled and great.
Hungary is my native land …”

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Silence falls

and an earlier fragment from my Poems of Eclipse …

… I was born

among poppies, spiked speedwell and wild grasses,
primeval plain of sky and thistle flowers
ere the zig zag Tisza river, led by a hungry donkey, flowed …

In hypnos, Princess Erzebet’s little goldfish lost
when the royal Danube spilled
was in the dreaming Tisza found,
where fishers whittled reed flutes in the sun for grandchildren
and – telling tales of war in which they fought,
sucked mightily at long stemmed pipes
with yellow tassels.

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Karmic Themes

I saw a path through almond trees
along the violet crease of your eyelid,
to the land you say you could enter.

I saw in silvery light that gleams around the clouds
wild horses roam, breath taking, undulating
floating patchwork cloth of meadows
whose margin into faery fades.

At home my pebbles, pictures and old porcelain
mismatch the elven valour of Arpad:
my grey and shabby fields – old Angol travelling east –
in sunrise drown.

Like all that lives,
we are a metaphor.

The river current does not concern itself with local agonies
of wave systems estranged, which in fast flowing course
carrying Karmic seed, collide, and through each other pass
the rivers of rebirth in seminal flood; but only with awareness.

A curve of the current is seen,
pushing at and into the rocky bend
while carrying sky-light, leaf-mould, colours of stone
and silt along a bed of generations to the sea.

The waters here scour deep and fast
deep fish of life to see: my urgency awakes.
Children of gods, in metaphor long buried gold
emerge from the rock, they are bursting to be told.

Their wake is somewhere in the curacy
of long years of tales from no man’s lland
on rock ledges shelved and waiting in a dark room.
No man is an island. We fall deep.

We are ignored by the main stream of the dreaming world,
for the glory of pure gold,
in the rain on a sunlit street or rock
has no currency to be held.”

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Then the Great Mage went on:

“Hungary is my native land.
The sky and the stars are my habitation.
The earth is my spouse.
Though I must die and be buried,
yet Vulcan causes me to be born anew.
Therefore Hungary is my native land
and my mother encloses the whole world.”

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Touching the riverbed … the smith Vulcan is a driver, he drives the sword through fire and water. Vulcan’s wife Aphrodite – Venus – encircles with her womb the sky and waters.

The Great Mage is the Sun, the spirit of fire and renewal, to find in ourselves. Fire lives in the twig as combustibility, and in the rock as gems and precious stones. Fire lives in the rock as coal and as amber from long buried trees. Fire is present, latent, sleeping and awake: the heart of the earth and mystery of our blood’s kindling, body warmth and auric radiance. Fire is the heart of a star in the rose, the buried Sun whose veins are twigs and trees, their fraction in the sky. Their cumulonimbus flints convecting one another, strike sparks, to flash and flow as lightning to kindle the earth.

The thunder is the voice of the secret fire. It pierces and breaks the heavens. The fire spills forth, seizes and is gathered into dark lumps of earth. And the earth must then with wings soar heavenward, until singed it falls and drowns.

Reduce the Red Sea by boiling. The earth reappearing is ‘all in all’, re-appareled in the meld and heart of every element. By this, the dragon is released and contained. It shall ‘ascend with wisdom from Earth to Heaven, then again descend to Earth, and unite together the powers of Above and Below. Let all ignorance and obscurity fly from you.’

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When everyone there had started to understand, the Mage spoke some more:

“Let that which is above be below,
let that which is visible be invisible,
let that which is below become that which is above,
let the invisible become visible, and the impalpable, palpable.

“Here is the perfection of our Art
with no defect or diminution.

“That in which death, life, destruction and resurrection dwell
is a round sphere with which the goddess of fortune drives her chariot,
imparting wisdom’s gift to men of God.
Its name here on earth and for human understanding, is the All in All.

“Let him who would know All in All
give earth great wings and let it fly up through the air
to heaven’s region – BERIAH.
Then singe its wings with fierce heat – divine AZILUTH –
and make it fall into the Red Sea – YETZIRAH –
and there be drowned.

“Dry up the water with fire and air –
evaporate Yetzirah by Aziluth and Beriah –
till earth – ASSIYAH – reappears as All in All.

“If you cannot through this process find it,
look around you. Look on nature.
The All in All is gravity of all metals and minerals derived from salt and sulphur.
Their mutual attraction is born of mercury.

“More I may not say
since all is comprehended in the all.

“My brothers, you are blessed
if hearing the wise, you find this Stone,
its power to heal and regenerate leprous and imperfect bodies.

“It has kept the vital fire in me so long alight
that I weary of life and long to die
yet cannot

“for I am bound to render thanks unto God’s wisdom,
mercy and gracious Gift
now and ever more. Amen.”

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And the old man vanished. And all who heard him went back to their homes and meditated on his words, day and night.

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The Great Mage was Master Rakoczy, Saint-Germain. He appeared also in medieval Britain, through Merlin’s form.   In alchemy, the body through giving thanks and through repeated drenching in the fountain of life, becomes intangibly yet effectively cleansed and spiritualised. It acquires a form of renewal without having to die and start all over again. Old murks are cleared out at source, as the atomic lattice through Spirit is redefined.

It is a homeopathic process of gradual tincture. Slowly, steadily, the molecular web and cellular memory are modified through purification by the inner fire. Their composition is altered to support the higher frequencies, while maintaining the same general appearance. Robust physical health might not be inevitable, yet it is a by-product of this kind of work, particularly if not itself the main aim.

The Key to the golden Life is lightly touched in all matters.

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27 February 2002

I dreamed this morning I was shown four jars containing coloured liquid. I cannot recall the first two from left to right; but the third one’s contents were radiant apple-green and the fourth one was reddish-brown and cloudy like pale old paint-water. This one was ‘humanity’. A voice came, at some point: “Darkness it hath, that is good, (but) darkness it is not.”

There are wonderful names which awaken me with bells. Beleriand, Belisarius, the Bells of Rachmaninov and of Liszt. There was a small grey dream-pony a few weeks ago called Bellarus: and in Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham, Bellomarius was the greatest of all the dragon slayers in the realm.

Youngsters in the Puszta by Hermann Reisz

My activity all this life is to clean the cupboard. I spent a long time looking for someone there. The Magyar puszta symbolises a clear and open horizon within, filled with sky. Like Narnia through the wardrobe, it has no hedge. A door opens to it at the end of Liszt’s “Christus” when Jesus rises from the tomb. There is a captive inside, who strives to come forth, rattling chains, moving stones. An opus of his soul lay unread on shelves, buried under sheaves of litany and litigation.

There is someone to see right through and beyond, to a common source. There is a tree filled with white blossom in my window.

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the key 1987

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Master R

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2016. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

Among my late father’s writings, I found two essays to post here in his memory, this one on Bird-songs, and another: ‘Mutterings from a Back Desk’ (among first or second violins in the orchestra). His acute ear pleases me. I shall post his ‘Back Desk thoughts‘ later this week, in my other blog, Aquariel.  (now done)

Peter died on 19 February at 93.  I was with him as he went ‘through the opening door’.  What a moment with a parent to share:  in his own words – ‘as into the Now, I bow.’  We planted him in a green churchyard in the North Devon countryside, with his Yule ancestors.  Rest in deep peace.  “Fare forward voyager!” … This which he used to say, is from Eliot’s four quartets.  Not farewell, but fare forward..

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Character in Birdsong (1952-3)

Often the calls and songs of birds evoke a startlingly clear atmosphere; the long crooning purr of the nightjar brings to mind still summer nights never quite dark.  The middle distant call of a partridge like the creaking of an un-oiled hinge suggests the hayfield in the evening.  Often these sounds can spring the catch of memory.  At all times and especially in lonely moments, bird song can be a part of life, and not just a background to it.

There are many people who take an interest in birds and enjoy watching them, yet really few can enjoy the songs in the same way.  This is strange, for it is so much easier to hear a bird singing than to see it.  The voice of the nightingale may be clearly audible half a mile away, and yet half an hour of search may give no more than a glimpse of the brown body slipping across a freckle of sunlight in a thicket.  For the lazy man there can be few pleasures to surpass lying back in the sun just listening to the birds.  And the ear when trained can give as much pleasure as the eye.

To name is to create interest, and recognition of the different songs and sounds is the first step.  Like most beginnings it is the most difficult, but whenever a little progress has been made, the fresh delight of hearing among the mesh of woodland sounds a known bird-song and of being able to listen to it as an individual will whet the appetite.  Concentrated and accurate listening are the requirements necessary to distinguish between the varying bird sounds until they are known so well that the mind automatically hears, recognises and criticises the songs while the body is intent upon some other task.  This is the aim, to know and enjoy without effort whatever birds are singing at any time.

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wood bird yantra

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Certainly the easiest way to learn bird songs is to hear a song and see the bird singing it.  To see is to believe, but it is usually far more difficult than just hearing and often demands more effort.  In many cases it is not essential.  Imaginative reading of word-pictures can enable the keen mind to recognise a bird note never before heard. ‘The Charm of Birds’ by Grey and the writings of W.E.Hudson contain some of the best descriptions of bird sounds in an extensive literature.

Bird-songs differ in four main ways.  To take the simplest first, there is the manner in which the bird sings and its position while singing.  Many birds sing from a perch.  The starling finds the chimney pot useful as a stand for his useful collection of clicks and chuckles, his wheezings and his imitative notes;  a clown’s song.  Mistle-thrushes sing from the top of a tree leaning into the wind, and song-thrushes sit higher and sing longer than blackbirds.  The robin sings from a lower perch and changes it fairly frequently.  Like many of the smaller birds, wrens and dunnocks sing quite spontaneously as they move about.  The lark is easily recognised, his song raining down from that high ecstatic body hung so close to the sky, and the meadow-pippit’s few liquid notes are thrown out as the bird parachutes down to a bush from the climax of its brief upward flight.

Secondly, there is the mood in which the song is cast.  Blackbirds are never young; their song is calm and reflective, born of a controlled emotion, of ‘emotion recalled in tranquillity‘.  The sentences are spaced and meaningful, giving the impression of thought and care, and there is fluency with mastery of the medium.

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How different is the boyish attitude of the thrush, of constant experimentation and interest. He listens to his short sentences, likes them and repeats them;  but he never does anything with them.  There is no design to his music.  Even so, the thrush of all birds seems to take the keenest delight in his own singing, and is often the last to fall silent at dusk.

Different again is the wild impetuous carolling of the mistle-thrush, a rush of swift sentences with little variety.  Careful listening will reveal little variety in the song of the redbreast, but so masterly is his control, so effortless his phrasing and so sweet his tone that this lack of material is masked. There is great tenderness in this emotional little song.  The willow-warbler sings in a similar mood, a single plaintive falling cadence, one of the purest sounds in all bird music.

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Few birds are more self-effacing than the dunnock, and his slight musical tinkle is meant not to offend.  How violently compares the ringing mechanical challenge of the wren!  Once the spring is released to set the song in motion, there is no stopping it until all is said.

A rather more subtle difference is the tone-colour or quality of the voice.  Many bird voices have the timbre of the flute;  but each species has its own kind of flute.  The blackbird’s flute is of green wood.  The tone is warm and rounded, has a throaty quality;  almost it might be said that the blackbird never quite clears his throat.  Nor has his voice the carrying power that enables the song-thrush to light up the evening in a higher drier register.  For the thrush is the descant recorder, a more even tone that never achieves the mellowness of the blackbird.  The robin has a silver flute, and how gently he uses it.  So do most of the warblers, but somewhere in their flutes there is a flaw which causes the voice to harshen on occasion.  The hardest metallic voice belongs to the wren – a tempered steel that rings in the ear.

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Trees planted by Peter, near Shebbear

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Lastly, the shape of the sentences or what the bird says is often a great help in getting to know a song.  All birds except the larks sing in more or less short sentences.  These sentences may be set and identical, and are easy to learn.  The hearty but uninspired descending expression of the chaffinch ending in a little turn is typical.  So is the yellow bunting’s ‘Little-bit-of-bread-and-NO-cheese’ in a voice suggesting the quivering heat of summer afternoons.  The tremendous vitality of the wren frequently sets in motion his long and pompous phrase with its bouncing rhythm and many trills.  Probably the simplest sentence is uttered by the first spring-migrant to arrive.  In late March the chiff-chaff is heard high in a tree stolidly repeating his single ill-articulated word with the rhythm of a carving-knife being sharpened.  He calls in fact, his name aloud, for all to hear.

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All the great singers bring variety into their songs with more or less differing sentences.  Few translations of bird songs into the human language bear much resemblance to the original, but the following fragment of a thrush’s song written about a hundred years ago, is an exception:

“Worse, mocked the thrush. ‘Die! Die!
O, could he do it, could he do it? Nay!
Be quick!  Be quick!  Here, here, here’
(went his lay)

“‘Take heed! take heed!’  Then, ‘Why?
Why? Why? Why? Why?
See-ee now!  See-ee now!’ (he drawled)
‘Back  Back  Back  R-r-r-run away?’

“O thrush be still!
or at thy will
seek some less sad interpreter than I.”

The nightingale also employs repetition on occasion with great effect, but his song is perhaps the most varied of them all, changing not only the phrases but the tone-colour and the strength of the notes.  He is the only bird to employ crescendo, and there are few things more wonderful to hear than his swelling repetition of a single lovely note until the night is filled with it.

To hear one such perfect note as this is worth much, and it is to this end that a knowledge of bird-songs leads.  For in the height of the singing season the birds sing in chorus, and it is only by picking out and listening to an individual that the single strands of beauty can be heard.  The ability to do this can be a great joy, and will open a new world of sensation and interest.

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Written in the early 1950s at The Bows, Glensaugh, Laurencekirk, Scotland
Revised at Breck Farm, Bransdale, Fadmoor, Yorks.

Peter was under-shepherd at the first, and managing a big hill of sheep at the second.

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Peter with Moss and Nell

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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2016. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

Woodland 1986

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Walking in the beech woods near Great Missenden, I was thinking about being the childhood, and I wrote this down:

Elder age is not only four
hop skip jump,
but the Mellow
just as good.

No repeat
but savour
through and through
the NOW

my elder age’s
same unlettered quality
to find itself
not a drag!

What a gem. It came when I bent down to see what it is like to be just child-high off the ground. And then stood tall again. It isn’t about recapturing that odd, rhapsodic little girl physically and interiorly. The whole organism is by now as different as a fruit tree from the sapling. The organs and pulses and hormones and appearance are changed. The pressure of life in children and kittens and lambs makes them skip irrepressibly, enchantingly.   (It still skips in me at 67). The pressure of life in we older folk has a slower tempo, the character of a river rather than mountain brook … which carved its way … the same ESSENCE unbrokenly unique.   The way to enter the stream is here now.

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little boy by the sea 1954

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Childhood is full of hassle – growing pains and hateful grownups and bad dreams and tedium and fear and need. Elderhood is full of hassle – just the same. It isn’t about what I become, it is being.   Savour the slow distillation at this point: river of leaf mould, sky and rain, river great snake slipping along its curving channel, the revelation turns discreet, subtle and lingering, an old wine.   It has to find its way through anxious mental arteries and conditioned stone walls and erratic absence and getting weary & cross. The marvel and mystery is here for the looking, and I love it so.

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Little girl in a meadow, 1955

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The mellowing. The living mystery is in the mellowing.   The child’s ferment is the bouquet in the elder one. You need a trained palate to really taste the wine: to become still where the child goes skip hop.   And then it takes you by the sea!

I’m reminded of Yehudi who played the violin perfectly when he was a little boy. When he grew up he lost it (terrifyingly) and had to learn how to do it: fingering, posture, technique, tone, bowing and behaviour.   He became a great humanitarian and yogi, and a musical ambassador for peace.

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Yehudi Menuhin joyously 1986

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This tells me that the creature the child grows up into has a special responsibility and value, because he or she does and is all kinds of things that the eternal inner child could not yet. Life is not just easy, at any stage of the game.

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Red roofs, Cornwall, 1956

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Elisa & Mary in Iona – 2016

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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

Trees in conference, Alet 1986

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When the brook
begins to flow,
a barque of impassioned words
appears.

At first, there is no bark,
there is the naked
pipe of a silver soaring tree
beyond my speech.

The standing flows
and flutes
the tap root of my soul
upturned.

from Poems of Eclipse

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**

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2014. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

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Tarot Keys Tower, Star and Moon, representing the paths on the Tree which converge on Netzach

These three Tarots tell me a story:  the cracking of the seedcase, the watering of the shoot, the evolutionary journey to ripen.  When the Tower falls, it reveals its inversion, a well.

I was thinking along the archetypal lines of 2016, 2017 … and today brought a link to a colour meditation on the same theme, which feels timely:
http://colourconscious.com/aura-soma/2017-a-year-for-the-star/   … “By listening to our star and living our truth we take responsibility for the only part that is truly in our hands …” (Dominic Yeoman)

The ‘Philosophus’ chapter in Paul Foster Case’s The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order offers 6 keys for lovers of wisdom to contemplate further: Death, Star, Chariot … Temperance, World, Sun children.

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Sextet arrangement: tarot philosophus 7.1.17

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Arranged here in a six pointed star – the Seal of Solomon – is a visual analogy  that natural man is the seed-case of the spiritual man.  I’m a dull stick these days.  “Philosophus” means cultivating clarity, and the word is derived from Philo Sofia – lover of wisdom … “who might be compared to a man who has learned to read the architect’s plans. The house is yet to build.”

What is clarity?   Clarity is a process of alignment, perhaps a desire to contribute to a positive humanity, a collective Lighthouse.

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Lighthouse by my brother Simon, circa 1965

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This morning  I seemed to be mouldering in a puddle – recovering from seasonal flu.  Then I thought of the Lighthouse:  a reflective focus.   Its shaft, its beam, penetrates the ocean depth and crosses the sea.  If I focus on that and give it time, my thought moves from fog into ‘precision tools’, into the quickening of community.   As I open into interior silence, I wait:  have faith: give it space.   The lenses above and below, converge.

click on image to view

The lighthouse shaft underwater, releases a flow of strength. Pictures are resurrected, taking on vibrance and meaning.   “May God be resurrected and his foes perish …  (Psalms).  As wax melts before the flame, as smoke is driven by the wind …”

RESURRECT … and my dark sloth slithers off the branch.  There is a golden sound now in the Archangel pouring quintessential water and fire onto muddy Leo and Scorpio creatures … beneath the shadow of his iridescent wings and rainbow …  dipping his toe in the bottomless brook:  “Guidance is not a mere article of faith.  It is a matter of daily personal experience.”

When it connects, it feels like scales dropping off as the Sun dawns.  There is a beautiful enigma with the androgyne who dances within the laurel of the World, and with the Children in their field:  they sparkle through the dew.   The smiling sunflowers all (except one – ) turn their faces to the children – the Seed of the Sun.  One sunflower-head watches the Sun, for form’s sake.  The childrens’ whole sexuality is in bud.  My fields are irrigated with the golden flow of their joy.  The world is darkened, but so is the closed interior of the unbroken seed.   The seed breaks into halves and into children.

In a nutshell, duties to life and community are perceived in a flash, which take time, labour and obscurity to realise.

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The dawn comes.  I have to approach it again and again and again.  To repeat by turning back the page to see what I wrote before – or what anyone else wrote – is not sufficient.  The key is turned afresh, to enlighten.  I have no illusions the enlightenment will last but it doesn’t matter:  it will come again. The Oracle never clones itself.

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Child and Grandmother, 2016

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The other 3 Keys (in the sextet above, in this post) are Death, the Star and the Chariot.   Death scythes the fertile ground.  The Star waters it.  The Chariot stands like a hyacinth or … a lighthouse with its keeper inside.

Go into the lamp room with its lenses and reflectors.  It is simple.  Light a candle, light my fire and let it travel across the sea.   Light it with a match or knock a spark from two flints.   The spark is within the stone (I wrote snow), like the flame within the wood, the cream within milk, the Upanishad.   The spark is Netzach on the Tree, the mating game … only connect.

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Netzach, Hod, Temperance on the Tree

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In the hells on earth, there are gleams here and there, which give an individual  some strength to carry his child or to care for another;  persons leave their homes and go out into the thick of it.  The manna is directed into the core of Hope in the human seed.

What is the Star of Hope?   Hope is not an abstract.  Hope is the capacity to transfigure a dark situation into a light one.   Hope illumines the dark and turgid, and dispels hatred and fear.   One moment I am dead.  The next moment I am alive and kicking.   This is Hope.

This is what is meant by the Star …  the star the Magi followed.  Hope is an irrigation, converting desert into orchard and oasis.  It can begin nowhere else but here.

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Elisa & Mary in Iona – 2016

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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2017. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

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Tarot Key 20 – the resurrection

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For me the solidarity awoke when I opened another greenpeace email.   It used the word ‘we shall defeat …’  This stirred me deep inside.   I’ve been feeling defeated.  What I stand for had taken a knocking.   Wake up and fight!   Fight, using my weapons as an artist.   I thought of a young mother who lived for years in fear, her family hounded from one mountain village to another.  When she decided to join her husband’s resistance party, and train to be a warrior, she was no longer negatived, she was positively charged, in tune with her destiny and the collective.   The worm turns.

With HOPE we resurrect the Star … shoulder to shoulder;  action.

I’m not very keen on yet more large crowds, politics and organisations.  But this is a time to look carefully at where my values truly are, and NOT feel ‘defeated’, and to act with whatever way small or large, is given.

SOUND THE TRUMPET! – with Purcell’s bright anthem “make the list’ning fields rebound!”  Do sing and dance with this magical clip!  At school, I did Purcell’s Come Ye Sons of Art for music A Level, long ago.  My sister and I sang to each other Sound the Trumpet over the washing up … like they do here.

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Gabriel’s bright horn in tarot Key 20, opens the graves and changes the level of consciousness.  This arcanum holds a mantric vibration running all the way down the fire-stick into earth.  In days of old they twirled a rod in dry wood for fire, and danced, stomped and chanted rhythmically. The archangel’s trumpet note is uniquely for you and uniquely for me:   each of us as we are born … and reborn.  Find and hear it every day;  learn well what it means and is for you.   Then blow it back to the trump and be of good cheer!  It is energising to have a clear common objective.  It raises our voice from the shadows into the light.

But take a good long look at what’s going on in my blind spot – the log in my own eye –  before I start projecting it outward.  Then, and only then – the principle may get to work;  with love.

Here is a good read!

https://wakingtheinfinite.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/the-end-of-patriarchy/

By paradox, what Mr Red Rag represents, may supply a catalyst for freedom to emerge from the wood.  Better to have it out in the open, than trip over it in the dark. Knowing what we see and what we feel, we build on that. We sing to the moon, we run with the Silver Wolves, we care for our young. There is joy and clarity in the coming together. Each day raise the level again;  keep walking, keep loving the work we do, and each other, keep it going, keep doing.

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silver wolf and moon

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Dancing with Pan, 1987

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2017. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

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Athene was the Greek warrior goddess.  She might correspond to India’s Durga.  Her magnificent grey eyes were filled with light;  she came across the seas, larger than life, to inspire Perseus and other heroes on their dangerous odyssey. She lent them her weapons, her bearskin and Hermes’ gold sandals and cloak of invisibility.  Her creature is the Owl.  May her wisdom be our courage.

When I was a child, reading Charles Kingsley’s The Heroes, I copied out my favourite pages from the tale of Perseus and the Gorgon – how we face our shadow –  and illustrated them.  Botticelli’s allegorical painting of Pallas Athene and the troubled man who is half a horse, puzzled me.

I had last year in the back of my mind’s eye, Athene’s face as she strokes the centaur’s head.  When I was small, my grandmother must have told me the story, because always since then, I hear her crisp voice explaining this picture, perhaps she talked to me about the shield and the bearskin and the centaur and the spear.  Later, I learned to read.   An archetype behind my grandmother’s presence – the true picture (like a Botticelli or Leonardo) -transcends the suggestive physical form. The Presence of that art stood subtly behind Helen Ede’s face, her flavour and her voice.

Each child has a special feeling for her grandmother perhaps.  This is my own.

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The painting by Sandro Botticelli

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One of my versions, in 1987.  I too was on my inner journey …

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… to mend my dolls.

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I set forth into life, with Athene’s blessing and Hermes’ sandals

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Do I learn from books, or do I really look and see?  Wake up!

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Here are Ceres and John, the deep unfolding bud within Revelation.

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When I did this drawing – copying Botticelli’s – towards the end of last year, the allegory or mystery within it came up to the touch. She seems to raise the human animal body with all its memory and mythos, through levels of awakening:  they behold one another, astonished.  I particularly enjoyed drawing the centaur.

It was very difficult for me to draw Athene. When she at long last began to look like a goddess (not Botticelli’s look-like, but in her own right) I became deeply interested in the Centaur.   With him, the painting’s archetypal resonance emerges.  He is the daemon, the living creature of the woods:  his face is twisted like a root:  he is as we were when the Spirit world still shone through our irregular features –   a tall, noble, careworn personage, Cheiron who guided the Argonauts from his cave on Mount Pelion.  In the original Botticelli, he looks tall and spacious, but when I try to draw him, I discover his horse-body is a Shetland pony – short legs and haunches at the level of Athene’s knees.  So his distortion and its strange natural beauty in the Botticelli is curious:  the man body is long and powerful:  the horse body small and sturdy.

Try to imagine him here in this room:  great Devic man of the woods on a little Sheltie’s short legs which (relatively) scuttle him along like a small dog.

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I always imagined Centaurs as the proud neck of great stallions who leap fallen trees and rocks effortlessly, read the stars and regard bipeds with disdain.  This one’s human body is outsize. Athene in my drawing is super-human size, she has very big feet.  She is a goddess.  I used to love the leaves and flowers on her shining dress.  Her face was rather grown up and sorrowful.  In my rendering, it is sensual like a female Pan, an awakened child, a bit like Botticelli’s earthy angels.  She gazes wonderingly at the Centaur creature whose dark locks of hair she strokes – in my drawing she might pull his hair, gently draw him up to her height, to be seen.   She seems to unmask nature.   Her presence and touch lifts him from small pony body (or cart-horse) to the godlike stature of human, and still he is uncoiling from his shy woodland state:  he shields himself like Adam and Eve:  he twists like an old tree. His eyes and consciousness do not know what or Who this is, that lifts, shines and troubles him.

The allegory is now clear to me.  Like the Birth of Aphrodite, it is another portrait of Renaissance in the collective soul-body at the time.   I am fascinated by his daemon woodiness and the idea that in any sylvan glade in the woods, these two might emerge through transpositions of the light.

In the painting they are on the shore of a lake by a temple; in the distance behind them sails a little boat. In my mind’s eye they are deep in the woods, among the trees. My early impress of childhood awakens to a transformed sound:  as I began to draw the Centaur, I heard and felt the ‘quickening’ in my body.  It is easier and a relief to draw his battered face than to try to represent a Botticelli beauty … I had a long struggle with her.  He is of the curled roots and loamy sharp smells of the woods.  Pan-like, he gives me his energy.

Like when I copied Botticelli’s Primavera Mercury some years ago, I understand God’s ‘twist’ and brush-stroke in our design, which we endure:  body’s spiral movement – face’s anxious uplift – essential in the overall design to support it like a pillar, like Atlas.

Mercury – Hermes – copy after Botticelli’s Primavera

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A week or two later, I did the same drawing, this time with my left hand.  Why?  Because my left hand – the surfacing subconscious or feminine, has not yet acquired bad habits.  It is less facile, so it is aware.  The lines come from within, slow, sensitive and deliberate, I seem to see where they should go.  I didn’t have to erase much.

Centaur and Athene after Botticelli – drawn with left hand

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Athene herself looks amazed at what she uncovers.  It is related to her allegories of unmasking with Perseus and the Gorgon, and to my feeling with this drawing.  Her shield and bears-head and owl are not visible, but all are implied in her raising of the Centaur to the light.   In my right-hand version, there wasn’t much room on the paper to draw her big axe-head on the staff she holds, and there was no room at all for the Centaur’s bow.

Centaurs are the Sagittarian Archer.  Traditionally the Sags are small, dark and lithe, and swift with their arrows which travel far … until they reach the Saturn field of Capricorn.   In winter there is this tidal pressure and restraint:  centrifugue and centripetal movement, Jupiter and Saturn across the Tree:  winter.

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Aphrodite comes ashore with shadow.

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Hear the sea.  Walk in the sand.

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Copy of Sandro Botticelli’s self-portrait detail from “Adoration of the Virgin”

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2017. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

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Happy Easter!  On a long walk in Hertfordshire with camera – which cannot capture that deep purple fiery glitter coming through the ground, so let’s just imagine it.

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World turns upside down: sky through the ground

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Sky, earth, water

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living creature

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living body

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worlds meet: as above so below

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tuning fork

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like a bow

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relationship, dancers

tingly tangle!

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landscape every which way

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Friend’s astrology on the Tree of Life

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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.  See also Aquariel

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2017. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

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My tarot reading last week – see Aquariel

Thrice Great Hermes said, “For never … can an embodied soul that has once leaped aloft, so as to get a hold upon the truly Good and True, slip back into the contrary.”

This is a profound Law.  Note he said ‘embodied’.  He didn’t say ‘without the body’ (as in trance or nirvana).   He said in effect, Leap with hands and feet into the heart of God.  That is an osmotic shift in the atom of human consciousness as a whole.  The membrane, the veil is semi-permeable.  There is no way the sap of the Tree of Life can run back downward.  The ascension pulls it through the cells;  a vacuum which it must follow and flow into.  Once you are through, you know that everyone comes through it sooner or later.   There are certain old clothes which are impossible to wear.   Love is no longer a thing of the movies.

Considering Chopin whom I am starting to sketch … his music was and is pure female opera song:  his unique ability to let them out of his bag;  his passion for singers, their lovely companionship and their voice which did such things.  Perhaps he might admire but could not love a woman who did not sing?  George Sand was probably not a singer (or perhaps she was?) – she called a spade a spade; her yang complemented his yin;  they may have had deep Karmic business in their attraction field.  One of the two sketches I did last night, while watching this video, is from hers of him.  From their liaison in Majorca came the tender Preludes which I used to play and to love dearly.  I have an old recording of Arrau playing them.  In one of them he throws a fiery tantrum, and my father used to mimic in falsetto George’s shock:  “Frederick!”

The journey up the Tree of Life through osmotic membranes is continuous, and there are obstacles – veils or resistances, a sort of grey chaos like my head-cold just now, through which the flowers spike their way.  These things come in waves.  When an inner contact is brewing, it brings some obscuring resistance to clear or blast off.  Through the snot and tissues, the irrepressible florets … make a baby sneeze.   The rising sap is a fountain of little fishes.  Not one of them can turn round and go back to the sack.   When the One which is ‘I’ reaches egg … PRESTO bellissima!   Nothing is EVER the same again.

Generally speaking, the course of life is a series of these small hiccups.  Perhaps jnana  (wisdom) is a state where they all join up and nothing is the same again EVER, and it is always like this:  the living and dying and letting go.   Robert Adams in Arizona looked like this.   He had no teeth when he said, “it has no end.  No end.”

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I imagine the extra terrestrial intelligences which interweave with ours, have that form of expansion which to us is liberation.  I imagine they move with our magidim and guardian angels easily, for the wavelength doesn’t limit the concepts.   The Presence of the aumakua varies only by local interest from galaxy to galaxy.   Holding my coloured lamp which invites them and rebuffs tricksters, I imagine them freely filling the spatial interstices in the room.   I may not have the gift of seeing their forms, but perhaps I can converse receptively with their mystery.

Fred Hoyle wrote a novel (1950s) of a close approach to Earth, of this kind.  When it connected to the intellectual brain only, it drove it insane.  The acceleration which is pure Consciousness can however be contained in the breathing heart body:  the heart or solar plexus mind (awakening silence which loves).

In this light, what is the accelerative frequency which plagues the human engineering at the present time, and where can it be accommodated?   Food for thought!

It drives many of us insane, particularly those whose incentive is to destroy their neighbours and environment.  These processes are cosmic eyeblinks; we endure their unfolding for decades and sometimes centuries.  Into their unfolding the threads of millennia are drawn.   Nothing of what is seen today can be interpreted unless we rise above it and get some glimpse of the landscape from elevation.   The landscape looks like the Andean Nazca lines, criss-crossing the ridges and plateaux.   To read this map would require a four-dimensional understanding of acupunctural meridians or the nadis of yoga, applied to the leylines of earth and through history’s points of intersection.   An acceptance that the map is of that dimension assists the contact of Higher Mind with a tiny bee in the earth hive.   Most accounts of Self knowledge say we should fall open into knowing nothing.   Then that by which I am known, can get to work.

Meister Eckhart said, “God does his deepest work in the soul when she is at rest.”  

The alchemical maxim is: Art begins where nature ceases to act.  The Hermetic soul begins where human intellect lets go.   I could study books about Nazca lines and Nadis, but I don’t wish to fill up my thought again with issues whose complexity generates karma by psychological default.  I now see clearly the last twenty years since I suddenly downloaded a lot of knowledge and started to see.   The light ‘grounded’ through some intense liaisons.   It had to materialise.

In the olden days, the rishis sat under trees and went about their lives and adored the sunrise and their cows:  their loving heart saw and knew the All, because it is in our DNA.  This faculty has not changed, deep down.   The sensitive veins to it are reopened, by keeping quiet.   This is what the alchemists call, “the miners of the mountains”.   It is all within us when we become still and look.

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Aruna is red fire,
Achala is standing still,
becoming a sacred hill, Arunachala, kind to kine
whose milk is the morning stream from Vedic stars.

The cow in Vedic hymn is sacred, pure light 
milked in pail by Upanishadic seers,
and a drove of cattle clouds at dawn, are gods 
that glow around her rising star.

In countless tales
the un-created cracked the sky;
but my silence of no angel’s feathers 
is drawn to see or sense
small feathers fall in place,
whether or not resolving.

1999, Poems of Eclipse

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It is the human predilection on the surface to keep busy.  That is OK.  Our bodies and our skills need location and exercise. Ramana Maharishi used to say that for those born in the west, to have to live the busy western mindset was their Sadhana or spiritual practice.  For those born in the east, their Sadhana was through ashram discipline along Yogic paths.  I sense the interplay and often collision of the western and eastern paths, permeated now by communication technology.  Blavatsky brought them together in the 19^th century;  J Krishnamurti lived the way the eastern and western ways ‘clap hands’.

Yet further east I hear the koan:  sound of one hand clapping.  Koans are designed for the mind’s habit to fall apart; and the existential koan is Love.

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Let my face cave into your SELF.
Every picture of my thought
spills out of being wordless.

Let my fear of you go,
let lion talk.  Let the lion see.
The sun doesn’t bother what goes on
when it rises and sets on earth.

The disk of the world’s hidden side
is a darkness on my light.
The wonder of that silent spreading corona
pulls away the cloth behind my eyes.

I have no support. The saying stops.
Let soles of my feet be eyes
to see and love, pick up the ground.

The darkness on the sun
is angel’s finger on my lips
stopping speech,  making me hear.

I wonder much at my concerns.
As the reel unrolls, I clench in my seat
so forming views ; the Inward, inexpressible
gift of the holy, returns
as soon as I go.
No matter what happens
to me, my walls arise and fall, like
Rome on the ocean wave.

The safety in just looking
has no sense at all.
It takes the risk,
the leaping
of the absolute deer

and skittering over the threshold
pushed,  each moment
opens from each point
of space a bright DAN DE LION —
Be brave !  be bold !  be
absent !
Let it go !

When chimerae collide
in the upkeep clashing,  let
the Lion see
how in relationship,
several masks combine,
clashing and colliding
anxiety and peace.

Raising your heads together,
unquiet mother and fishy friend,
let your patterns pull
and drag you home.

The pull to drown within
opens the flower’s corona upturned:

a voice with
nothing to say.

from “Poems of Eclipse 1999”

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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See also Aquariel

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2017. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

A reading from Caitlin & John Matthews’ Arthurian Tarot (cut deck once into centre of pile, right and left hands)

Re-reading some old writings in 2005 about 2012 and the ending of the Mayan calendar, I found a forgotten practical insight: to realign each day my “human terrestrial axis” imaginatively to the galactic core.

The actual picture we were given was: in December 2012 the configuration of planets interacting with stellar influences might pull our planet into a more upright position relatively.  Indeed the astrology during that time was quite loaded, an “eggs in one basket” situation with the Moon moving through those energy fields.  This could indicate a symbolic or gradual polar-axis alignment with galactic centre – perceived not geo-physically but as an evolving consciousness.

To uplift and straighten my spine with polar axis is a quiet conscious work. The same force of Nature in ages past raised early homo sapiens to stand and walk upright.    I have to keep reminding myself, as I keep forgetting … the “Schumann resonance” – Gaia’s slow pulse or wavelength; to lean with the mast of the Grail ship.

The idea of Earth’s polar axis tilting physically was – as I thought at the time – a naive and literal interpretation of the transcendent view which is:  Gaia’s subtle body moves into an altered resonance with her cosmic environment. In physical terms, this takes place in  waves over a geological period of generations.

Screenshot by Thomas Razzeto, 12.08pm, 21 December 2012 in Ipaza, Mexico

“The slow change of the angle of the axis of the earth with respect to the centre of the galaxy will bring no ill effects.  As far as Mother Nature goes, it is business as usual.  The sun continues to shine, the earth continues to spin, and the four seasons continue to transform from one into another.  …  Once a year the earth orbits into the special position that creates the galactic alignment, and once every 26,000 years this happens at virtually the same moment as the winter solstice.”

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12 sphere Tree of Life

The above is extracted from http://www.mysticmamma.com/solstice-12-21-12-end-restart-of-mayan-calendar-galactic-alignment/ –  which contains an article by Thomas Razzeto in 2008.  Because of the time lapse since then, I slightly abridged it.

He continues by describing as a “sacred tree” the sunrise procession of planets on 2012 solstice through the ecliptic path which crosses the Milky Way’s dark centre.  At solstice noon the sun transited the core point – as I understand it, a subtle but powerful event through all the planes.  “The Mayan sacred tree is an astronomical reference to the cross made by galactic equator and the ecliptic path of the Sun as seen from Earth, near the centre of the galaxy.  The sacred tree is part of the fixed background of the stars.  Its shape and location with respect to the other stars never changes.

“We should consider the location of the centre of the galaxy as the Mayan womb of creation.  On this day at this time, it is at the bottom acting as the source, the root system of the sacred tree.  So everything comes from source into our world of duality.  What a beautiful metaphor!  This makes much more sense than the false yet often repeated statement that the sun would be on top of the centre of the galaxy on this special day.

“When we look at the configuration at midday – the moment of the Sun’s greatest strength – we have the sacred tree being exhibited in an extremely interesting way.  When we consider the Sun’s presence in the middle of the dark rift while it is also in the middle of those four planets (Venus, Mercury, Pluto, Mars), I think we have found something that is quite remarkable.  …  We have the opportunity to align our thoughts and vibrations with others who wish the same for our planet.”  (Copyright Thomas Razzeto 2008).

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This is a process to feel or empathise intuitively, rather than try to analyse.  Light is born through darkness.  Time dissolves into cyclic presence.   As the 2012 concentric continues to realign our axial relationship, I think we should listen more to this tender point in ourselves each winter and each summer, and keep still.  It may be that more terrestrial tremors develop at solstices where there is increased sensitivity to magnetic realignment.  We may watch and see and be shown.  In the sacramental consciousness, no humanity or atom of nature is separate.

Initially the impact is subjective: an addictive acceleration  – an interactive and  reactive technology overload.  Terrestrial beings who will not or cannot harmonise with the holistic shift, are flung onto the illumined stage periphery; they may live violently, acting out the drama we desire to watch and to entertain ourselves with; or they may suffer the pressure and upheaval.  Precisely the same rattling disturbs my lower mind.

The lower frequency (individual and collective) in disarray and discord shows in high-relief, man’s inhumanity to man and to the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms.

I am organically interwoven with this as a Sun-Moon Capricorn/Cancer with five planets in earth signs. Through frequent fatigue and my lower mind’s dismal chatter, I am yet aware during the years since 2012 of a progressive widening of the gap between my view of things and the mainstream worldview.  The distorted media version is here today and gone tomorrow; keeping my ear to the ground, I pick up only what is needful, to be informed.

Capricorn glyph with Hermes Trismegistos, 1988

It was said in the earlier days,  ”In the rollercoaster through the Photon Belt, those who evolve will tend to detach and stand aside from those who regress or exploit others at any level.”  We observe the polarisation in the politics, in land management and in business. The new and slowly growing holistic principle is profoundly philanthropic; the grass-roots flourish through my own extended family. Only connect …

At the same time I ask myself where and how do I engage with the regressive element and the agony of its victims and the homeless, as I am challenged with it daily?  It is like two sides of a widening crevasse or bergschrund dividing the mountain from the glacier; that great split is bridged for we are One.  The delineation and its depth are clear.

Master R said in 1947 … “Ours is no work of other worlds and planes. Here on this weeping, suffering earth, is where the Shrine of Love must be built, and built with action, not alone with words …  The can opener of the intellect is too dull to probe the secrets of the Heart of Life.  Knowledge goes deeper than statement. Love, and you shall know … Thy pain is my pain, thy sorrows pierce my heart.  I stand not aloof.”

Photo from dylanontherocks.wordpress.com

long ridge near Hope Gill, Lake district Cumbria (photo by JA, April 2018)

The real meaning of “Ascension” and the grounded Book of Revelation is – a daily grind!

Ascension is not “ascent” so much as discovering the path along the mountain.   Ascension draws the Light deep into the ground. I take responsibility for the illumining and clearing of my shadow and of ancient habits.  My tiny spine is Gaia’s – the invisibly vast polar axis with Her magnetic fields and shields and Aurora.   This perception throws up and out the baggage on the beach.  Many of us must embrace and clarify big relationship Karmas and their wounds as a whole at this point in time.  I evolve not through denial but through forgiving.  It is no use to pass the buck!  It is no use to paste it onto a mythical “Them” out there, or “They” in all our discontented issues and habits of speech.  The Change in humankind begins nowhere else but here:  in myself and in yourself.   There is no time like the present connectivity.  There is no time but the present.

My father once visited a Buddhist Rishi who replied, “The past is gone. The future hasn’t happened yet.  The present is Now.  Don’t waste it!”

Ascension is your and my compass: compassion.

Connect around the pyramid – a drawing I did for my father for Xmas 1987

A hidden quantum of lighthouse-keepers in the Change reaches critical mass.  There is no single event; there is a decade, a generation, a lifetime’s curve of changes in attitude to our environment.  The atrocities I see and am distressed by only emphasise the bigger picture of the Change at all levels, throughout the human gene pool.

Stained glass at St Monica’s church, Palmers Green in London.  This is no crucified Christ but one who strides from the tomb, embracing all the worlds

Uranus entered Taurus last week; he will traverse this threshold back and forth for a year or two, before proceeding into the springtide deep within Earth’s flowering.  Though there will continue to be battles with land grabbers, we are likely to witness an “unexpected”  collective turning point as the Gaia awareness gains environmental strength;  a hands-on questioning of our use of fuel and food and its waste.  The brakes were on for decades – the juggernaut against the brake, an immense friction of scorched tyres – but from about here the whole thing begins to slow down.  Slow down!  Personal and collective history demonstrate that we human beings individual and collective do not change and grow until it is unendurable for us not to.

What is the Gaia consciousness?  For me, my spine, my core, is Earth’s:  and Earth’s alignment with the Solar system’s flower of orbits and magnetic fields, and with the galaxy and other stellar systems.

We humans are in no atom separate from nature, the soil, bird, beast, insect and rock forms.  We humans are in no atom separate from Earth’s internal dark magma – our unconscious – which bursts like a phoenix into fire and light the instant it encounters air … the song of the breath.  We humans are in no atom separate from our roads and our heavy buildings and our parasitic tourism and our blinkers.

Biro-amour drawing for David by Tony Wigg. The Greek lettering is ‘Phallos’ whose root ‘Shines’: the verb moves but does not name or fix the light. In the magma sphere within earth’s mantle, there is no air for light to exist. The analogy is with the subconscious ignition of creative imagery. Darkness holds the Shining within itself.

We humans along with all organisms are her breath, her pulse.   Wherever possible, if your life is inextricably busy, accelerated or pressured, pause for just a moment:  slow down to reflect a detail or be silent.   Creatures in the woodland stop their foraging, to look around … until the active fountain rises again within them.  Be refreshed.

These brief openings will grow in due course, and join up like the blue sky through clouds.  Join hands with all of us who try to do this as and when we can. In the inevitable flowering of Logres, find and cherish the Grail vessel in a hillside brook, and dip to drink.  Although poisonous and persuasive, the economic and military juggernaut fights for existence as it dies.  So called world leaders and magnates are puppets.  They do me a favour: they show me my hard drive.  Where am I greedy? Where do I want more and more?   It is actually a dream.   It is hard to wake up; but glimpses come like shafts of sunlight through nature’s canopy.

KEEP SEEING AND KEEP GOING AND KEEP PRACTICING.

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Ramana Maharshi with young squirrel

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See also Aquariel

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2017. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

Climbers on the rope – 1964 – a left-handed belay!

Early this year I took a few climbing lessons at the age of 69 – inspired by family developments.  I used to be a fair tree-climber and sea-cliff scrambler; I dislike any form of mechanical or competitive exercise. At Swiss Cottage climbing centre in London I learned to manage the rope and belay a climber safely, and to climb a wall and to abseil down it.  I felt scared but each time I came away with a stretch of freedom in my spine – like a cat.  I was hooked.  Recently I started at the Castle climbing centre at Manor House near Finsbury Park.  I go alone, to practice bouldering and to watch.

The Castle is an old pumping station, built as a huge Victorian folly with turrets and three towers – a handsome building.  Some 20 years ago it was leased from English Heritage and turned into reputably the most varied indoor climbing centre in the land.  It stands in an acre of organic garden; all the food is home grown and the place is run on self-sustaining lines.

I would like to be at the Castle all day, take some good reading and find a nook between scrambles, like writing in a coffee shop.  I could alternate climb-stretch exertions and scribing.  Yesterday I kept getting bored and tired and then caught up in it again.  Perhaps I want someone to do it with.  A brand-new bouldering room is about to be opened.

And … why not sketch?  … from life!  I just did these from photos.  Keep practicing.

How odd that I was so snooty about the climbing centre my niece took me to, many years ago – somewhere in the east end.  She and her man monkeyed sleekly up and down fierce looking walls.  When I had a go I hated it.  There was no sea-breeze cliff or moorland view to lift or inspire my dragging body weight, no rock for fingers to love, just dead cement and coloured toy holds.  I felt like a stone.  I was amazed at the guys climbing along the ceiling like spiders.  I thought they were fanatics.

These two “boulders” on the 1st floor at the Castle are called Lust and Envy. They are great. I spend a lot of time on those – but not between them!

You know … in rock climbing for senior moments, don’t just try to complete a traverse or a wall;  be inventive with the holds and their funny shapes, seek out different things with them, stay on the spot, find out what my toes can do.   That pleasing tingling ache in my hands develops finger strength – the same delicate dexterity for playing the piano.  Blood flow increases and differentiates the tendons.  Walk tall!   Feet strengthen also.  Can stand tippy-toes better than before, I think.  Body core – gravity centre – I was aware of this many times yesterday when moving laterally.  I picked up some tips while watching rock climbing videos online.  Sooner or later I will strike up a friendship or join a rope or get myself a lesson with one of the helpful staff.  Wait and see.  Right now my whole body is delighted to be doing this.  I like the chalky smell there, and sometimes they play cool sounds.   In the 2nd-floor cafe is excellent coffee and restorative peanut bars to eat while watching high and daring ascents with rope and pitons  Nearby is a kid’s wall which I scramble up and down.   I love watching the kids; they come with their teacher and scamper all over the sheer slabs – I never grew up!

We older folk are sensitive or rugged individual types … the sweetness of the solitude on distant fells comes to this place, to keep in trim.

What do my molecules, cells, nerve fibres and enzymes of the Great Change feel about it?  I am a stretchy amoeba pattern of trillions of stars.  That’s nice – try to recall that, next time!  I would like my climbing to be contemplative as the technique slowly enters  my bones.  Yesterday it felt like stepping back.  At Swiss Cottage wall earlier this year, they said when you are learning you progress for a couple of sessions and then it seems you slip back and that’s natural because next time it is suddenly easier.  The oscillation moves forward and back, like when hung on a difficult place.  New agilities being built take time.  The muscle while developing is young, hard and unwieldy.  It needs to loosen into itself and become flexible, for the flexibility and grace is power.  These are lessons for life.

Line dance, 1988. When I drew these, I felt wonderful afterwards.  It flowed and danced up the street within me.  There is nothing like “creating energy” by taking a line for a walk to see where it might go.  As far as I remember, I drew these slowly, consciously, on the edge of exploration; that is what released their energy.

It is the same principle my David talked about, re any kind of physical exercise: don’t do it every day, take days off in between for the agility to develop as a whole.  While at rest, it sinks in to build new cells.

The same principle guides the inner work. The Spirit is in charge.  Awaken to it!  Advise and entice my stellar amoeba over the playground; then rest.  I guess as I cultivate my slow and dainty deliberation, the technique will come, because rock climbing isn’t with brute strength but with coordination.  Coordination is the core.  The core gets blissed out when she is filled with the inner star.   The beautiful lesson of Life:  Core Strength, let go and watch her reach and swing and flow.   Surprise!  Delight!

http://goldenpath.s3.amazonaws.com/55th-genekey-prelude/55th-genekey-prelude.pdf

Hey, Gene Key 55!   Richard Rudd’s talk of molecules and blood circulation in the music of change brought to my mind a  starfish.  “The human being is nothing more than a symphony of interwoven rhythms, tempos and sounds.”   A robin calls outside: and Clive who loves Richard Jeffries, records vibrant birdsongs on his website Art in Nature.  DNA is structured in triplets.  All our relationships are triadic.  Musical form is ABA with C.  Abac-us.

I like my primary-coloured abacus and its beads.   The magus – my inner teacher –  is getting interested and encourages me with the climbing.

You know it is such a chance for magic – the inner plane – to river into embodiment and to fill flesh, bone and sinew with stars and to know and respect the tired crystals in our blood: the imagination illumines.

She is the beginning, and out of her unbounded oceanic “confusion” the male arises to differentiate and gather it into a distaff – Siva’s still point within the centre of each wheel within wheels.  The feminine Sakti movement giving birth to and generated through the stillness, plays on the loom of numberless threads.

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View from Near Hope gill, Lake district

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See also Aquariel

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2018. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

The Coin of the sages is an alchemist’s gift from heaven. It turns up in any crucible of life and relationships.  We polish our old copper coins (Venus) till they shine as the golden Sun.  

In an old alchemy journal I found this entry …  delicately it interfaces the timeless diary of today.  “The Glory of the World” and “The Golden Tripod” which are quoted, are 17th century writings in the Hermetic Museum library.  The Tarot keys discussed are in the Builders of the Adytum deck.

BOTA Tarot Tableau: three septenaries, seven columns: the keyboard. This deck is published by the Builders of the Adytum in black and white: each student colours and thereby empowers his or her own deck, following the Builders’ strict guidelines. The colours of the Keys have audial resonance also.

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8 March 2003            COIN

The ripe Priestess  sometimes makes Hermit’s Mountain seem remote … winnowing out error and shattering the Tower.   These three Keys form a vertical column in the BOTA Tarot Tableau. In fact they represent the bud, the bloom and the bursting of the seedcase as from chrysalis … in nature and in any creative process.

Beginning my Sapphire Tree painting for a book cover:  I started as blind egoists do on the dirty surface.   This should grow organically from centre as a mandala — not in one rush like a face.   Sapphire means liquid pale blue fire.   The 72 leaves should be a delicate tracery of  seminal wave connections in the white fire around and between the Menorah branches. Working from the centre outwards, let it grow.   Here is a dirty pool.   Cleanse to begin with, its centre.

Paul Foster Case invites me again to dip into the alchemical forests of “GLORY OF THE WORLD”.   When reading these, fountain gently with them up and down, restoring the synchrony of heart-body which is today collapsed and tired.

On page 61 it discusses the COIN OF THE SAGES.   I can see this white Coin from the sky, so bright that I cannot see yet what is impressed upon it.

Our Stone has its head in the earth and its root in the air.   I read alchemical texts not with my Hod but with the breath, with my inside.   Then they glow.   It says the Spirit delights in nothing so much as its own Soul and its own body.  Delight is another word for the Higher Will; be comforted.   It is minted pure and bright and white within the dark.   Begin from the centre
but let it descend first from the white sun.   The work of
the Priestess lets it descend.   10am, School of the Soul.

Priestess, King of Swords and the Fool, 1987

The Priestess, Rosy Cross and Fool descending – 2003

September 2018 – The evolution of those two drawings (1987 and 2003) is my life today –  the heart beats within the tapestry.  A house to paint in, which I invoked  15 years ago and forgot about, recently materialised;  last week I beeswaxed the floor and began work there with a new Tree of Life – see end of this post.  I have not painted for years!

new art-room

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2003 continued:

Hurly Burly welcomed her Mum so kindly last night at the Garrick wine-bar – Mum was feeling lousy because she’s forgotten how to paint.   HB too has been re-discovering how to paint — the light came in through her window.   I had a nice time there where she works,  but ate and drank too much, which paralyses my gut for the night.   But to read the “Golden Tripod” now, sprays white light into the Garrick; and I was introduced to a curly Paddy who has 400 (?) paintings he said he bought and collected in his house — the secret of a good painting is it invites you to take a walk into it.   Tall tales do not matter in conversation.   On my right, as I tackled warm goat’s cheese and fennel swordfish and a big glass of wine, sat Marta’s sister with her hyperactive three-year-old son Adam enjoying himself all over the counter with his tiny neat brown hands.

Enough:   now focus on Basil Valentine.

It is impossible for Yesod to sperm the Stone.  Yesod cannot remember how.  The sperming comes down through antakharana – the pipeline – and is observed and — as perception of it refines and begins to dispel the obscuring cloud — obeyed with joy: as in p.45 in the Golden Tripod.   Note the Source of the Priestess’s stream and her receiving element.   Male and female seed are the One thing, the Child within.   Wherever there is joy in creation is this natural intercourse of the Air, the secret fire, the dew.   The Earth is only the invisible thing that attracts union.  Out of no thing blossoms unicity.

Seek not our Stone in substances which cannot stand the test of fire.   Seek it in the incombustible oil that is the fire itself that ever renews and fattens the land.   It grows and gently shines and increases like a plant.   It increases in that it prevails.   Through all darkness, the stem glows and shines.

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September 2018

Here is the beginning of my new Tree painting – just sketching out Malkuth, Yesod, Hod, Netzach in the Lower Face, based on  carvings of the Companions around Chartres cathedral;  Archangel Rafael in Hod has no face yet.  I hope for it to combine thematically the medieval flowering of Islamic alchemists and Christian sages, the Star, Cross and Crescent, the child and parenting, the cosmic serpent of our DNA, nature and the fountain of life … as the journey begins, let it lead me where it will.

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Life has been too full-on for me to keep up with my blog posting.  But a month or two ago, I posted in my other blog Aquariel about a pair of Tarot oracles in June and July.   Here are the three links:

For Gaia
janeaquariel.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/summer-oracle-1-for-gaia/

Through thunder of the dew fall silent
janeaquariel.wordpress.com/2018/07/21/summer-oracle-2-through-thunder-or-the-dew-fall-silent/

The dying and the guardians
janeaquariel.wordpress.com/2018/08/01/summer-oracle-3-the-dying-and-the-guardians/

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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See also Aquariel

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2018. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

In this free improvisation on a pair of Kali Yantras, Western and Eastern Mandala traditions alike share the sacred geometric form and its Tantric alchemy. My next post will feature my original illustrations of the Yoga Wisdom Goddesses or Mahavidyas – including Kali – for Kavitha Chinnaiyan’s thoughtful book and teaching: “Shakti Rising”. The book was published in 2017,

Here is a sketch of Mother Kali’s ecstatic great lover, the Bengali saint Ramakrishna:

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Early writings from Journal – 3 October 2010

Outside there is a gale. The house is a ship.  Today I contemplate the two Kali Yantras my friend in Australia sent.

Mother Kali’s four gated field is red. Eight rose/lotus petals with indigo stems encircle a big black sphere. Inside the black sphere is a Tetrahedron: five white womb triangles with a white bindu or apex, point towards you all her dark, cosmic power: AMA the dark womb is herself so powerful she is almost Yang.

(February 2019 – I drew for today this freehand copy:)

Marriage of Tetrahedrons

In the East and in Platonic wisdom the Tetrahedron is nature’s most stable form. Whether the apex points downwards (female/Shakti triad) or upwards from baseline (male/Siva triad), the Triad is produced to rest on any of its four sides.  No wonder that in the Western Mystery tradition J H V H is named Tetragrammaton, with the hidden fourth-dimension factor which seeds it.

In the Tetragrammaton cycles of YOD HEH VAV HEH, the second-HEH grows from centre of the triangle YOD HEH VAV, giving birth to new YOD, new cycle. So the second HEH in the cycle is pregnancy! The letter HEH in Tetragrammaton has the female function, but in Tarot Alphabet, HEH’s character is male, assigned to Aries and the Emperor. The Yin is so filled with fertility, she comes forth as the Son, the Yang.

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The strange potency conjoins man and woman, of whom the most uncompromisingly transformative is woman.

I begin to get a feel of Kali, her luminously dark velvet field, her awesome sexual shout, her red tongue, her necklace of skulls …  In today’s first Yantra (Yangtra!), the womb triangle/tetrahedron accommodates Siva’s fiery light through her body, without disturbing the total blackness of her sphere.

Mother Kali in India needs strong devotees, for she upsets their lives and floods their villages. Ramakrishna of Bengal embodied her devoted Tantric playfellow . And he was a crazy wisdom, often off his head.

Ramakrishna in samadhi, 1879

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Perhaps Kali arouses a man’s chaotic feminine oracle, but in a woman she becomes peace, a peace with gleaming eyes, white, black, red, softening to indigo rose violet in her valleys.

Kali is the wild weather that flows from the Himalayas.

One of the tributaries of Ganges is Kali Gandaki, which flows from the Tibetan watershed between those regal 8,000 metre consorts Dhaulagiri and Annapurna – the man and the woman, each is a mountain range. Dhaulagiri is priapic and dramatically visible. Annapurna is mostly concealed behind a vast shadowing cirque of Nilgiri or cloud mountains.

Ganges is a royal water serpent through the plains.
Supposedly, my natal Neptune in Libra (square Jupiter in Capricorn) epitomises my life-long offerings to Dhaulagiri and Annapurna.

Kali is a Seer.
VALE

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Siva Kali detail – Sacred India Tarot 2011

Kali 13, sacred india tarot publ.Yogi Impressions 2011

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A word on Yantra …
Yantras are geometrical constructs of Tantra – an art of touch and fluid union. One of Tantra’s translated meanings is “the web” or connectivity.  In these sketches I romp through a few Western forms and symbols of Yantra:

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PART TWO – October 2010

AVE

Six is the lily, with a six starred sun inside. The man blossoms into feminine. The Lovers are soul triads which marry. Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not, nor do they spin. Solomon in all his glory is not as these.

Within the Flower of Solomon’s Seal or Shield, Solomon in all his glory is the Temple and the intuition. The Star of David – Solomon’s son? or father? – is ABEN, the Stone: the fluidity of the Philosopher’s stone or elixir: the Seal becoming the son.

Lilies grow with the roses in the Magician’s garden. The rose is grown from the heart of the Cross formed of six squares: the rose is wrapped  within the Cube of Space.

The rose has multiples of five petals – her cultivation and extravagance.

Five is the female rose, pentagonal star of humankind representing the five limbs or senses.  Red is the colour-tone of Mars and of desire. “Five” suggests 1+4, 14 the gematria (number) of DVD (in Hebrew, dovid) the Beloved; and also of Gold – the work of the Sun.

The latin Cross (it folds up into a cube) is the field. The Star is higher consciousness. The inner Pentagram is humankind, and the root, flower and seed of human desire.

Kali the goddess is black and fierce. In Kabbalah she might be seen as Binah’s AMA, the dark womb.

The Chamundra Kali Yantra has five pink-red petalled concentric waves: the centre one is a Seal of Solomon (double Tetrahedron) coloured red – inside a white octagon of two squares. Like the great Sri Chakra Yantra, she draws inward and flows outward simultaneously: very quiet and at peace. She opens from inside a black field of Four Gates.

So she also expresses the Akasha Tejas tattva, or (in the western School) the whole Tree of Life inside an egg (field) of AIN SOF, the Endless. With six in the middle, she emanates as five rings, and is enclosed in a field of four.

(February 2019 – Like the other Kali Yantra in this post, I draw it for myself.  To embody Her birth-giving energy, I copied the computer-generated  version  I was sent.  The physical contact allows Nature’s irregularities to occur – as blown by wind and wave.)

Yantras are fertile seeds and signs. They need to be seen four-dimensionally – that is, as a tree or fountain.  They rise through the orbital system or cross-sectional rings of time.  They suggest the growth of the tree from root and shoot, encompassing all its seasons, seeds and bird-life.  This Yantra has Priapus in the centre, 8-pointed, white and red, surrounded by four pulses (orgasmic time-rings) of the Rose, and then again by the Cube of Space which is black. Priapus contains the feminine of the male flower, and at the heart is a white bindu. So, the Chamundra Yantra is Mother Kali’s kundalini shakti or kus. How sweetly these things translate.

And … in this light, this Yantra, a drawing to come some day, and how to see it? – how Siva couples with this full-blown dark-rose kus of Kali. Siva is nearly always painted white, though sometimes he has a peacock-blue throat. His is a Yogic phallus. He sits in Yoga (union) and it points up within him, and inside him there is Mother Kali absorbing it all, and creating a wild, rumbustious universe.

Any such focus is good, for holding the mind quiet. The Yantra is held loosely, lightly in my being. Note how between the dark-rose outward petalling, the Akashic space lightens from black through indigo to sky. BINAH – the cosmic sphere of Understanding: stand-under the waterfall.

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The above is some writing I discovered from nearly ten years ago.

Below is the sketch and my original portrait of Kali in 2016 for Kavitha’s book “Shakti Rising“.  See my next post for originals of the other nine yogic Mahavidyas.

Sketch for Kali in “Shakti Rising” by Kavitha Chinnaiyam

Mahavidya Kali: in “Shakti Rising by Kavitha Chinnaiyam

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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See also Aquariel

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2019. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

The Sanskrit words Maha and Vidya translate to “Great Wisdom”.

Dr Kavitha Chinnaiyam’s book “Shakti Rising” was published in 2017 and you can find it on Amazon.  Earlier that year she asked me to do the illustrations for it.  They are included here under copyright.

It was a wonderful opportunity to reacquaint myself with the Mahavidyas – the Ten Wisdom Goddesses.  I had been inspired by them previously in David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri’s) “Tantric Yoga and the Wisdom Goddesses”.

In this new post I will collect together the illustrations in Kavitha’s book, as well as some background images for a fresh angle on the creative process!

Kavitha combines her distinguished career in cardiology with teaching Yoga and meditation.  She introduces her Shakti Rising facebook community:  “This group is about radical self-discovery through the divine feminine. In this safe place, we can share anything knowing that it will be held in mutual love and respect.”

The group practices meditation and develops the momentum of Kavitha’s work through questions, insights and sharing.

This sketch invoking Saraswathi Vedic goddess of the arts, creativity and learning, was done many years ago. Does she remind us of anyone?   3,000 years ago, the Saraswathi River in north west India flowed through the centre of Vedic culture and wisdom.  The river dried up into the desert of Rajasthan and became a deity, but its bed was recently rediscovered by archaeologists, and flows again. Saraswathi’s consort is Brahma.

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My medium for the drawings in Shakti Rising is the simplest one: pencil and Bic biro.  Here is a chance to see the original scans, smudges and all – with pauses in the visual narrative, for fresh imagery.  My art combines European and Indian roots with Renaissance and the ancient world.  At the time I did the Mahavidya drawings there was intense “disappointment” and pain in the world’s political crust: yet their power rivered up through me with an alternative and forward-looking Vision.

In re-invoking them now, I feel this same uplift brings together the deep roots of the Goddess east and west; her mountains, caves and rivers.  As we breathe and liberate the Mahavidya in all Her weathers and mysteries … she cradles us in Her freedom.  Take courage!

This is a drawing of my grandmother in circa 1946, on a Moroccan beach. She and my grandfather were giving servicemen a day off from their Gibralter barracks. One of them recalled, “Helen looked like a marble statue come to life, her hair curling, her arms shining, she walked by the frilly waters, and when Jim saw her he told her she looked like a goddess and she said, ‘I know.’”

By way of background, here are two copies of Botticelli’s Pallas Athene with Centaur – a painting I associated from early childhood with my grandmother, who inspired me with these Renaissance models.  The one on the right is done with my left hand.  Click on either one to view:

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Dr Kavitha Chinnaiyam bridges modern medicine to the elder archetypes and healing powers of Kundalini Shakti.  She encourages us to rediscover our unfettered female beauty through the disciplines of Yoga, Mantra and Puja.  These practices attune and refine our being to the Shakti frequency, helping us to face and transform the shadows of our subconscious conditioning. Her work is a mountain-spring through the ground for men and women to realise collective human health and parenting.  Let us gather together …

You will find some of these ten Mahavidyas are wild, extravagant, untamed and elemental – especially Kali, Tara and the fiery Bhairavi.  Awaken the creative process!

Tarot Key 8: the singing Lion within each of us is gentled forth to speak. This is the card of Soul Strength or “Fohat” – a word for the limitless Light.

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The joy of the rising feminine power in nature still meets the engine of patriarchal distortions in the world.  This is inevitable.  We human beings as men and women sustain deep, separative wounds of conditioning in our individual and collective psyche. Mother Nature in her seasonal manifestations within the evolutionary biosphere may appear at first to resist growth in order to strengthen and deepen the root.

Sacred India Tarot – publ. Yogi Impressions 2011: the Queen of Staves or Wands represents SVAHA, the goddess of awakening: (see Chinnamasta mantra in D.Frawley’s work, mentioned below).  SVAHA is pronounced at the cadence of some of the longer mantras, to release the shakti.  Svaha!  Awaken!

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And now: the Mahavidyas.

Ganesh is the Lord of Obstacles.  His blessing is invoked at the beginning of each commercial enterprise or creative activity.  Ganesh the elephant god, involuntary offspring of Siva and Parvati, and brother to the transcendent Skanda, “unlocks the throat of poets.” So he is often depicted playing the flute.  To him are offered loving sweets and incense.  His vehicle is the wily and intelligent Rat.  On his brow is drawn the Siva Shakti Yantra:  two yoni triangles descend through one male lingam (upward).

In fact I did not draw this Ganesh until I had almost completed Mother Kali:  then I was nudged to do so – how could I have forgotten?

Ganesh is immensely difficult to draw, combining animal, child-human and divine anatomy – a challenging initiatory obstacle for any artist! – as I found with my repeated erasures, disproportions and re-tries.

Below is my first “practice” drawing of Kali – in charcoal and touches of chalk on tinted sugar-paper:

I was experimenting with media:  but generally I prefer line, and it is easier to reproduce.  Siva is aware in blissful deep sleep:  she absorbs his electricity and crackles.  Her seer was Ramakrishna: her city is Calcutta whose river Hugli – a branch of the Ganges delta – flows into the Bay of Bengal.

Next I sketched her this way – in ferocious glee!  Kavitha emailed to me various traditional versions.   I was not happy with this sketch, and at first I put it away.  Lord Siva looks as if he wishes to lie-in for a bit longer.

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At about that time, a joke entered:  to illustrate my friend Tony’s Cat-a-Log for his exhibition.  Our goddess looks perplexed, floating on the subconscious sea.  Behind her and to the left the charcoal flurry suggests Ganesh waving his trunk – perhaps reminding me to do him first?

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GALLERY ONE (below) – click on any smaller image to view or enlarge. These are Mahavidya Kali, Tara (sketch), Mahavidya Tara, two versions of Mahavidya Tripura Sundari and Mahavidya Bhuvaneshwari.  The deities supporting Tripura Sundari’s throne in version 2 were squeezed up together by xerox, scissors and glue, to fit the book’s format!

I recommend to you Kavitha’s book for their sadhana, integration and practice.  I will just mention here, that Kali is an elemental force;  Tara is a wild lass; Tipura Sundari invites with pure alluring Beauty, and Bhuvaneshwari bestows the Wisdom.  They express the light and shadows of our inner nature.

The graceful weight of Tipura Sundari’s great beauty awakens Siva’s sense of humour.  The gods supporting their plinth are (from left to right) the trimurti Siva, Brahma and Vishnu – destruction, creation, preservation – with Siva in his prehistoric character as Rudra the Wild Hunter.  They flank the Sri Chakra Yantra, Nature’s mandala upon nine strings.

The painting of figs in this sequence is an illustration for D H Lawrence’s long poem “Figs”.

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I include in GALLERY 2 (below) Anthony Wigg’s portrait of a Cyclopean woman, and another fig.  In many versions of the fiery Mahavidya Bhairavi, she has severed Siva’s head: while he in his Rudra the Wild Hunter consciousness looks on, presaging the self-beheaded Chinnamasta .   Kavitha asked me to remove Rudra and restore Siva’s head.  These three versions show the careful rotation of his body, as if during birth.

Mahavidya Chinnamasta – meaning “severed head”  also has two versions.  I used a drawing I did about 12 years ago, and added Chinnamasta’s three devotees.  Ecstatic, headless, thought-free, she drinks pure Consciousness, absorbing Kundalini from the lovers who earth the lightning-flash.  Her seer in the 1930s was the poet Ganapati Muni, spiritual brother to Ramana Maharshi.  Another of her names is Vajra Vairocani,”the effulgent lightning bolt of pure perception.” David Frawley (of Ganapati Muni’s lineage) gives this version of her Mantra: Om srim hrim hrim aim vajra-vairocaniyai hum hum phat Svaha!  

Those bell-notes awaken non-dual consciousness. He writes, “Srim is a mantra of beauty and light. Hrim is the mantra of inner transformation. Her Name is the  lightning of realisation. Hum gives the power to cut through illusions. Phat concentrates the force of the mantra.  Svaha (Awakening) offers it to the inner fire of awareness.  Bhairava the fierce form of Siva, is the seer of her mantra, as well as Bhairavi’s.”

Thus, the mutual exchange of Mahavidyas Bhairavi and Chinnamasta.

I find it best to view and close the images one by one, rather than sequentially inside the gallery, where the line sometimes tends to blur.

Of all the Mahavidyas, the one I most enjoyed drawing was Dhumavati, the elder grandmother or crone.  She was done in less than a day.  She carries a sieve and she rides a chariot flanked by two Saturnine crows.  Meeting her again, her wisdom nourishes me in the strange, immortally changing flesh.  I find it wonderful how the wild ecstatic Chinnamasta is followed in the sequence by Dhumavati: out of ageless Mystery speaks the fountain of youth.

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Here is my sketch and finished drawing of Mahavidya Bagalamukhi and her suitor – the logical mind.  What is your story?

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Mahavidya Matangi has an extraordinary presence – she resonates with Saraswathi at the beginning of this post.  Her seed vibration is “HRIM” – the inner transformation through creative expression.

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In this smaller sequence are:  a painting my daughter did at five years old for her great-grandfather – Jumping over the fire for Persian new year equinox – photos of Rose and Silver-birch – and a Black panther. In the Vidya we integrate primordial resources of childhood, the fiery heart, the animal kingdom and earth.   These pictures remind me that when my daughter was a child she had a dream one night that she met a Great Cat – a tiger, panther or lion. She kept still and they gazed quietly into each other’s eyes.

And finally, Mahavidya Kamalakshmika – With Lakshmi, goddess of the hearth, and of prosperity, she remains as ever Kali !

The wild fires of Kali, Bhairavi and Chinnamasta, the music of Tripura Sundari, Bhuvaneshwari and Matangi, the challenging passion of Bagalamukhi and the ancient wisdom of Dhumavati flow everlastingly sweet within her being.  Desire ripens to serenity. The Elephants return; she rides the lotus.

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And from a neighbouring Wisdom School:

Tibetan Dakini – re-drawn from an unknown original

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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See also Aquariel

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2019. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/