Revelation

Amar-elo, by Nanda Correa

"I am Protennoia, the Thought that dwells in the Light. I am the movement that dwells in the All, she in whom the All takes its stand, the first-born among those who came to be, she who exists before the All....I am incomprehensible, dwelling in the incomprehensible. I move in every creature...

I am the real Voice. I cry out in everyone, and they recognize it (the voice), since a seed indwells them." 

    —excerpt from Trimorphic Protennoia, translated by John D. Turner

I'm fascinated by revelations. Somehow whenever revelatory in-spiration strikes, there is an element of creativity to it—playful, heretical, perhaps not the whole truth. How many revelations have been excluded from sacred scriptures because they don't quite match what religious leaders expect to hear? This creative aspect of transcendent experience is something I can't stop thinking about. To be willing to receive a revelation means to be willing to revise what is true. And if you keep revising "truth," what is true? 

Admiring: French Chef

Laura Calder
(picture from Chez LaFleur in Manhattan)

In case my last post sounded a little too Calvinist, let's get to know another hero of mine, Laura Calder. She is known for her cooking show French Food at Home, where she teaches viewers about the joys of eating good food.

What makes me admire her is her wild career arc: linguistics, public relations, cooking... And her rather interdisciplinary explanation of food:

"I'm interested in stories, what food does for you, it’s almost a language in its own right."
   —Laura Calder, interview for York University

"I really love studying languages even just to keep my brain going, but I think it’s an obsession with my mouth, I love everything that goes in and I love what comes out and I love listening to different ways people speak. I love poetry, I love literature, I love accents, but writing was my first love and I wanted to write about food."
   —Laura Calder, interview in FrenchRevolution

Also, I love her playful, relaxed approach to food. She has her opinions on how to serve water (see French Taste), but she also knows that very few people want to master a cuisine to be able make a good chocolate mousse.

So, cook a good, happy, lovely meal and enjoy it, if you feel like it.

Merry Christmas

The Nativity, by Sarah Stone
via Strawberige

Happy Alchemical-Child Day. If you happen to catch a glimpse of the precious creative force within, I hope you will care for it like a mother, glory in it like the angels, and honor it like the humblest of kings.

Postmodern Hymn: No Line on the Horizon

Benten, by Warwick Goble

I could make a whole hymnal out of U2 songs, and I know they would be totally happy with that. It's common knowledge that they make use of Christian imagery in their lyrics and promote what they would say are Christian values, although their brand of Christianity is definitely not mainstream.

But before we get too concerned with labeling anyone "Christian" or "not-Christian" though, I'd like to look at one powerful image that continually resurfaces in their songs: the divine feminine. It's an image that blurs the line between Christianity and non-Christianity. Listen to songs such as "No Line on the Horizon," "She Moves in Mysterious Ways," "Grace," "Lemon," "Gloria," and you'll hear a collection of recurring motifs: the mysterious female, grace, ocean, moon.

What do these motifs have in common? For one thing, the lyrics point to a lack of control, either in the creative process or in the search for absolution. Creativity and grace come unexpectedly, as Bono says in an interview with Rolling Stone: "This kind of spirit blows through every now and then. It’s a very strange feeling. We’re waiting for God to walk into the room – and God, it turns out, is very unreliable."

If you're interested in this topic, here are some fun reads on the interwebs:

• "U2: The Stadium Psalmists and Prophets," by Mark Meynell
• U2 posts on Rock and Theology
• "Yeats, U2, and Poetic Imagination," by Joe Bisz 
• "Mysterious Ways: The Kabbalah of U2," by Geofrey Dennis

Personal Myth 4: The Return

The Return, by me

I think it's time to conclude this series. My four-part creation myth ends with the mystery of what death might mean. I don't pretend to have any answers about life after death, but I feel that it works best in my life as an alchemical step within a greater process. As a necessary part of life on earth, death allows for the recycling of materials, and this can happen on a variety of levels, not just the biological level. The place that is most rotten within us is the very place that can lead to new growth and new life!

What happens to us personally after we die? I leave that for others to say. I once had a dream, though, in which a girl cast a spell on a two lovers: their hearts crystallized into the stars, and their bodies dissolved into the night sky.

Star Cleaner's Reunion

from The Starcleaner Reunion, by Cooper Edens

Apparently, I'm going through a star phase right now. All of my posts on stars reminded me of my favorite children's book: The Starcleaner Reunion, by Cooper Edens. I was surprised to see on Amazon how little it is read or appreciated. To me, it captures the magic and wildness of childhood. Indeed, this seems to be Edens' goal: "I'm trying to break the dualism of the classic tale. My stories embrace the philosophy that these two worlds exist simultaneously—the real world is a dream and the dream world is real. Because of this, there are no classic quests in my books. I don't have people going away to the dream world and returning to reality."

The story is about a child who joins an angel in cleaning the stars, which have been forgotten and are now dull. But there is a catch at the end—the stars might not really be in the sky . . . 

Bob Ross: His Grooviness

I'm always the last to hear about new memes, but nevertheless I want to share this lovely video by John D. Boswell of Symphony of Science, which I found on Drawn. I have a special soft spot for Bob Ross, particularly for his way of waving good-bye as though he was sending out the good vibes. 

For more background on this piece, visit the Washington Post's article here.

Language Celestial

Vision, by Katie Scott
via The Idea Foundation

O thou Spirit of Truth, visit our minds once more,
Give us to read in letters of light the language celestial
Written all over the earth, written all over the sky—
Thus may we bring our hearts once more to know our Creator,
Seeing in all things around, types of the Infinite Mind.
    —from "Correspondences," by Christopher Pearce Cranch

When I read this poetic excerpt, I perform a creative misreading in which "Creator" becomes "Creative Ground of Being" and "Infinite Mind" becomes "Infinite Mind-Body." I've had lots of practice hearing my own heretical revisions in my years of church going. I like to think of this process of willful misunderstanding  as recycling worn material for my own use. 

Do you ever imagine what your version of the "Creative Ground of Being" looks like? Would it be the famous giant eyeball? For me, I like to think it has the particular smell of a garden after rain. I rarely seem to break my imagination away from the earth and into the stars.

Sacred Space: Impermanent Gifts

Danmala, by Kathy Klein
via Colossal

What is it about us humans that makes us want to rearrange natural objects into patterns? When I find myself in a beautiful setting, sometimes the most natural thing to do seems to be to make some sort of "offering" to the beauty I find myself surrounded by. An arrangement of shells, in some attempt to align my own perspective with the greater landscape. An arrangement of rocks, as a greeting to others, a sign of recognition that my own perspective can blend with others'. 

Kathy Klein's danmalas are a good example of this kind of art. Visit her gallery to see a quilt of technicolor patterns, all created from flower petals. She describes "centering" herself and creating the art in a state of devotional silence. The designs she creates seem to pulsate from the blending of her state of mind with the natural matter she works with.

Some of my favorite art is the kind that is meant to be impermanent. There's something so poignant about making something, knowing that when you leave it behind, it will eventually be returned to the earth. There's something beautiful, too, in leaving the art to be discovered for others who happen to be passing by. I sometimes want to hoard everything that's beautiful, and making something that can be left behind is a good exercise in sharing and letting go, even if a photograph allows us to hold onto the art in some sense!

Shell Offering by me

Admiring: A Woman Who Lived in Her Own Time

Tasha Tudor
(from Miss Moss)

I remember first learning about Tasha Tudor through some TV show, which is somewhat ironic considering she lived such an un-modern life. I remember watching the show, though, and thinking that such a woman couldn't be real, that no one would have the courage or the determination to live life so fully on her own terms. 

I read that she believed she was a re-incarnation of a sea captain's wife, and that this belief somewhat fed her determination to live the way she did. (Was this sea captain her muse and her animus?) She lived in a house without running water or electricity, raised her children and goats and cows and corgis, made candles, baked, gardened, and wrote and illustrated over one hundred books. 

Taking my inspiration a bit from Tasha, I'll be posting less regularly for a while. I need to live in my own time, and not in the time of my computer.

6: Strength and Efficiency

Honey Comb Patch, by Field Day

It's time for the sixth installment of the number series based on The Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe by Michael Schneider. 

The beauty of hexagons comes in their efficient use of space and their strength. Like circles, hexagons have a low perimeter to surface area ratio; like triangles, hexagons are strong and distribute weight efficiently. Bees build their hives in a hexagonal pattern and reap the benefits: "a mere one and one-half ounces of wax holds four pounds of honey," says Schneider.

We use the phrase "busy as a bee," but thinking about how efficient beehives are, I'm wanting to imitate bees in other ways. (And I'll be looking at my "altar to beautiful necessity," which includes a bit of beehive I found, in a new way, too.) Rather than be busy, how can I be efficient? How can I build something beautiful and strong? How can I cram as much sweetness as I can into my life?

Love Creates Universes

My Universe, by Rob Ryan

A totally personal post: Today makes three years since I married my husband. It blows my mind how our love has created new universe, a totally new reality.

Personal Myth: Humans

Humans, by me

Humans, by me

Here is my next chapter in my personal myth project, which explores what it means to be human in this world. For me, what's interesting about being a humans is how language, laughter, and story can be used to   mediate the natural cycles of life and death. Given that I love learning foreign languages, I really feel that language is an integral part of the human experience. Maybe it's because I feel that words fail me too often, and that stories uplift me, but my own experience of the world is closely related to the human faculty for language and for nonlanguage too.

5: Growth and Renewal

The Tree of Life, by Gustav Klimt

It's time for the fifth installment of the number series based on The Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe by Michael Schneider. 

With the number five comes the pentagon and pentagram. Many natural structures, from leaves to hands, follow a pentagram structure, and so the pentagram often symbolizes creativity and fecundity. Check out the link above to discover more naturally occurring five-ness. 

The pentagram also holds within it various phi relationships, so Schneider uses this chapter as an opportunity to introduce the golden mean and golden spiral. This page has a pretty good explanation of how you get there. I won't dwell on the details, but do try to make your own spiral for the fun of it! (Klimt's painting above is a display of Archimedian spirals. The golden spiral is the spiral of shells and galaxies, but because the distance between its swirls expands with each round, it's harder to find in artwork.) 

Have you ever felt like you were on a spiral path? Jackob Bernoulli created a motto for the golden spiral: Eadem mutato reurgo (Although changed, I arise again the same). There's something beautiful about imagining myself journeying on a spiral labyrinth. Many authors and artists have described the spiral's magical qualities, including the great Nabokov:

"The spiral is a spiritualized circle. In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, unwound, has ceased to be vicious; it has been set free. I thought this up when I was a schoolboy, and I also discovered that Hegel's triadic series (so popular in old Russia) expressed merely the essential spirality of all things in relation to time. Twirl follows twirl, and every synthesis is the thesis of the next series. If we consider the simplest spiral, three series may be distinguished in it, corresponding to those of the triad: We can call "thetic" the small curve or arc that initiates the convolution centrally; "antithetic" the larger arc that faces the first in the process of continuing it; and "synthetic" the still ampler arc that continues the second while following the first along the outer side. And so on."
    —Speak Memory, by Vladmir Nabokov

4: Earth and Harmony

"Diamond in a Square" Quilt Top
via Cowan's

Let's continue on with the number series based on The Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe by Michael Schneider. 

With number four comes the square, the symbol of matter and stability—four directions, four seasons, four elements (reinterpreted by Schneider as solid, liquid, gas, and plasma), and so on. 

Part of the beauty of the square is the way it can be diminished or expanded by using its midpoints to create a diamond or using its endpoints as the midpoints of a bigger diamond. 

This expanding and diminishing pattern makes a great metaphor for the common saying "as above, so below": as we see the pattern in the physical world, so can we look creatively into our inner worlds to see patterns of fourness. Jung saw four psychological functions: thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensation (see his Psychological Types). Schneider describes Adam's dominion over the earth as mastery over the four elements of his inner nature. 

Part of me feels uncomfortable with the assertions of that last paragraph, that there is truly some fourfold aspect to our psyches, but I do think these metaphors can be helpful. If we can learn from the harmony outside of us, perhaps we can transform our inner lives to be more harmonious as well.

Admiring: Brave Artist

La Llamada (The Call) , by Remedios Varo

via wikiart

Artworks by Remedios Varo capture inner worlds that aren't always discernible in every day life. I love that she was courageous enough to paint these surreal visions, even if her viewers are as unaware as the citizens sleeping in the city walls, as in La Llamada, above. In many paintings, she honors women for having a connection to creativity and intuition, gifts that seem to come from a higher, otherworldy source.

Sometimes, this connection can make exhausting, inescapable demands, as in Papilla Estellar below. The woman feeds the moon ground up stars, but neither the moon nor the woman look particularly healthy or happy.

Papilla Estellar ("Celestial Pabulum"), by Remedios Varo

Sometimes, men are able to harness the "female" connection to dreams and creativity, but, as suggested in Troubador, they don't always feel safe in what they are doing.

Troubador, by Remedios Varo

Regardless of whether you agree with her differentiation of the genders, I do think it's true that getting in touch with dreamworlds can be scary and uncomfortable. Hence, my admiration for Remedios—she was truly a heroic artist.

Dancing with the Water

Behind the Surface, by Nadaia Moro
via trendland

I've been having lots of watery dreams lately, so these pictures by Nadia Moro really speak to me. In my dream space, water brings non-differentiation and returns what's not important to prima materia. 

If water dissolves the irrelevant, the key to living joyfully is to identify with what is lasting. (Not that I'm saying what that is.) 

After this dissolution comes the dance. Recognize you're part of something powerfully creative and join in its creative song.

2: The Moment of Creativity

Earth Prayers, by Francene Hart

In this second installment of my numbers series, based on The Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe, we will look at the vesica piscis as the symbol of duality.

A visica piscis is created by drawing two circles, each of whose center point is on the circumference of the other. Drawing a vesica piscis allows you to draw a line, and then triangles, squares, and so one, if you're following classical geometry.

"This almond space is the crucible of the creating process. . . . It brings forth shapes and patterns from the archetypal world of ideal geometry. . . . For this reason it has also been called the womb of Chaos, the womb of the Goddess of the Night, and the mouth that speaks the word of creation."

What's amazing is how much art and architecture uses this shape. One of my favorite examples is the doorways of gothic cathedrals. Doors in this shape symbolize a passing through from one world to the next. Check out the link to the Beginner's Guide above to explore more examples of this shape.

1: The Seed Point

Circles, 1926, by Wassily Kandinsky
via Bauhaus

Welcome to a new series. I'm reading The Beginner's Guide to Creating the Universe, and I will be posting a little segment on each number 1 through 10, as I work through the book. I love this book because it incorporates myth, art, science, and geometry, and it encourages you to "create the universe" with your compass and straightedge. By mindfully creating simple shapes and recognizing patterns, perhaps I can live a little more harmoniously in the world.

Here is Michael Schneider's meditation on drawing a circle, the symbol of unity:

"To construct a symbolic universe, begin with a point, the circle's essence. . . . A true point is impossible to draw, having absolutely no dimension, not length, width, or height. . . . The point is the source of our whole of wholes. It is beyond understanding, unknowable, silently self-enfolded. But like a seed, a point will expand to fulfill itself as a circle. . . . Ponder the point as a seed enfolding a sacred mystery."

In this post-modern world, points and centers aren't very fashionable, but I like the idea of the center being illusory and unknowable. Is our center an unsolvable mystery?

Artful Folding

by Akira Yoshizawa
via Origami Maniacs

"I also want to make in origami the joy of living. In Buddhism we call it 'throwing your body to the ground to thank God.' It might be a little hard to understand, but that's the feeling I've been searching for and trying to put into origami my whole life."

    —Akira Yoshizawa, in Origami: From Anglefish to Zen

Akira Yoshizawa is famous for revolutionizing the art of origami. He invented the wet-folding technique and created the diagram system that is used today for origami directions. What I really love about him is his almost mystical concern for the living world—the story goes that he would create animals not with a goal of simply mimicking their outward appearance, but with an understanding of how the animals developed out of single-cell beginnings. 

"There are two ways to the style of Zen living. One is to know the space around you, to know the world, and accept it. We all inhale the same air, for one thing, so we share nature with one another. The other way is to know yourself, your feelings, and what's inside you. . . . If you know yourself and at the same time love nature and the people around you, the two ways of Zen will be united."

    —Akira Yoshizawa, in Origami: From Anglefish to Zen