Without Sin
30” x 45”
mixed media & oils
(Susurros y Encantamientos)
I like to work improvisationally and step back periodically to see what has arisen. When I stepped back from this two-month collection of works as a whole, what struck me was the colors – an unusual palette for me – Mexico brought color into my blood!
I found a pathway. Or made one.
Yes, made a pathway into being:
Picking and bending my way up the dried river bed–through thorns of doubt
This morning, I opened Orion Foxwood's book, The Faery Teachings* and found yet again that it is so often my conceptual orientation to language that erects barriers in my mind. The terms “Upper” “Middle” and “Lower” are frequently used to describe shamanic cosmologies. Yet Upper, Middle and Lower are–in my mind’s eye and sense–linear and remote, informed irrevocably by
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As a child, like most children, I was not much interested in designating the differences between ‘real’ and ‘not real’, (not to mention that much of what was considered ‘real’ by the adults around me seemed positively distasteful). I longed to know, to validate and discover, to make real and to follow the beauty, mystery, and luminosity that emerged unexpectedly in glimpses, at moments when the motivation to avoid punishment receded or the teacher looked away. This longing did not loosen its grip on me.
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The Tarot cards, particularly the 22 Trumps represent a number of familiar and potent archetypes: symbols of human experience that arise again and again across cultures: the old sage, the fool , the emperor-king, the mysterious priestess. The minor cards, otherwise known as ‘pips’ might be said to offer a symbolic view of ordinary human experiences over the course of a lifetime. By way of imagery and symbolism, the cards are a tool capable of drawing together the unconscious/mythologically-oriented mind and the reasoning mind.
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Why is it said that in Autumn the veils grow thin? Its a folk truism: this is the best time to contact the disembodied. And here, in New England, I am watching the trembling leaves, I am eating sugar and fat, I am looking for my thick socks. I am preparing for a long journey. Or a long sleep.
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Shamans return to the world of the living with conscious knowledge of the inner realms.
R. Grimassi
Shamanic line drawings trace a path through ‘swaying places’ (trials and obstacles) marked by water, sand & clouds.
The Book of Symbols 430
Ascent origin = ascendere (latin) to climb, or freedom from weight. oft paired with descent. May signify the volatilizing of a solid / the spiritualizing of matter / making conscious unconscious projections. Integration of polarities: ladder, tree, stairs…in alchemy ascent must necessarily be followed by descent (shaman returns to body).
Read More By Mark Strand
Not the attendance of stones
nor the applauding wind,
shall let you know
you have arrived,
nor the sea that celebrates
only departures,
nor the mountains,
nor the dying cities.
Nothing will tell you
where you are.
Each moment is a place
you've never been.
Read MoreLast week, on the Autumnal Equinox, I led this immersive installation as part of my final graduate presentation at Goddard College in Port Townsend, Washington.
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Listening to an On the BlackChair interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM6cHlBfgxU with Orion Foxwood (a Southern Root Magic and Appalachian Conjure Man) as I re-work an incarnation of the painting I call Soul Retrieval.
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Dreams reveal the image-content that our psyche is interested in or clinging to, energetically charged or potent images that symbolize some deeper meaning. This is our personal mythology. Why is it important? Because what we envision directs our action, even if we don’t realize it.
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