Part 4: The Stele of Jeu. Emanation, Self-Actualization, and the Ladder of the Spheres

Phanes and the Ladder of the Spheres digital photomanipulation 14 x 16
 http://www.deerapposelli.com/illustration.html

A friend passed along a YouTube (see below) of Israel Regardie reciting the Bornless Ritual. The friend, a Brit, mentioned that Regardie’s voice was kind of quaint—“like an old relative with that cockney” as he put it. I’m guessing that the equivalent would be me listening to my now long-past grandpa with his East Side Bowery New York accent. I had imagined that Regardie’s voice and delivery would be more elegant. I searched YouTube for a clip of someone orating the Stele of Jeu in original Greek but came up empty handed. (If anyone can direct me to such a video, I’d luv it). 

I was thinking that the most potent way to orate the Stele of Jeu would be in original Greek, with intonation of barbaric words and vowel sounds in proper ancient Greek pronunciation. After all, as explained in Part 3, the letters and sounds of the Greek alphabet were thought to have special mystical efficacy in perhaps much the same way that the Sanskrit and Hebrew alphabets were and still are thought to. On that note, scholar Judith Dillon, who has been in contact with me regarding my posts about the Stele of Jeu, explained that both the structure of and mysticism surrounding the Hebrew and Greek alphabets can be traced to the Phoenicians. Joscelyn Godwin, in his book The Seven Vowel Sounds explains that Hebrew sound mysticism was adapted from Egyptian mysticism, particularly in regard to intonation of vowel sounds, and this mystery was preserved in Graeco-Egyptian Gnosticism.¹

In taking closer look at Marsanes (Codex X of the Nag Hammadi texts), we see that the fragmentary text is talking about sound combinations in relation to the “shapes” of the soul, qualities of angels, and the process of emanation from the Monad (“God” as the transcendent Absolute) to gross material existence.

On Emanation

A number of mystical ideologies operate under the premise that existence as we know it was not created by a primordial, self-caused personality, popularly called God. Rather, they operate under the premise that material existence is an “emanation” in which the “thing” that is Existence itself inscrutably divides and transforms Itself through a series of progressively denser stages until the physical world as we know it comes into being. This idea is found in Neoplatonic, Gnostic, Hermetic, Qabalist, Vedantist, and Tantric systems to name only those I’m somewhat familiar with.

Verse 35 from an esoteric Tantric meditation manual called the Saundarya-Lahari, which is the text-accompaniment of a famous Tantric image called Śri Chakra, explains it nicely:

You are the mind, you are space, and you also are fire.

You are water and earth, too.

When you have transformed yourself into the universe in this way,

There is nothing that exists in relation to you.

To transform yourself into the universe,

You assume the aspects of consciousness and bliss² in the form of the power of Śiva.

It is important to understand the idea of emanation because this is the real rationale for chakra lore and for its Western parallels found in the Qabalist Tree of Life and the alchemical/hermetic ladder of the planets and Hermetic and Gnostic cosmogony.

Magical texts such as the Stele of Jeu may incorporate vowel or “barbarous” sounds as a way to work with the processes of emanation in a “path of return.” Writers, such as Godwin,¹ have pointed out that the vowel sounds can correspond with the classical planets, which correspond with elements and with the psychic centers in the body in a way similar to “chakras” of Eastern Tantric lore. Like chakras, they are seen as forming a ladder of evolution and involution in the human psyche. Understanding and passing through their mysteries becomes a path of liberation and self-actualization.

A Visionary Experience with the Stele of Jeu

So, here is where I segue from being a nerd to begin discussion about how the practice of reciting the Stele of Jeu is going for me. How it’s been revealing itself, possibly playing out in my life.

I began doing the practice on May 15^th and intend to complete a 40-day course. I begin the ritual with an opening that acknowledges spiritual ideals I take refuge in and also includes rituals of self-purification and casting of ritual space. I chant the ritual (a bit more mellifluously than Regardie orating the Bornless Rite) and conclude the ritual with a few minutes of meditation. With the exception of the second time I did the ritual, visionary content has been minimal. Frankly, at this point in my life, that is a good thing. The practice is mostly making me more “mindful,” which I will elaborate on in my next blog entry.

In any case, on the second day that I conducted the ritual, I had an interesting experience—the kind that people who do this sort of thing generally aim to have happen. During the preparatory part of my ritual, which involved chanting that was unrelated to Stele of Jeu text, I experienced some dynamic phenomena related to my foundations in yogic and Tantric Buddhist practices. Upon completion of the oration of the Stele of Jeu, I “heard” the statement “I am the seed of Atum.” At this point, I had not yet gathered information or made the leap about possible inferences to Ra in the text. The statement was a kind of foreshadowing--something I had experienced frequently while working with the Arbatel years ago. 

When I sat for meditation, which was actually more an exercise in cogitation that day, I was met by the inner vision of an erstwhile “spirit guide” who first emerged when I was doing astral temple/inner plane work with a Dione Fortune lineage years ago. The same character showed up again while doing Arbatel work. I entertained some disjointed images that “he” was “showing” me. When I “got” that a geometric shape I was seeing had something to do with the orphic egg, as if in response, a flood of images came into my mind, which I made a digital illustration of later that day.

I don’t give the same weight to visionary experiences as I once had. I see them as 1. dreamlike insights or ways of seeing that my subconscious mind commandeers and my conscious mind artificially spins into something intelligible or 2. epiphenomena (byproducts/symptoms) of a change in brain structure that can occur when we experience something new or break a pattern or habit—a change that manifests in thinking and behavior.

In any case, I got the idea that the image above represented the ladder of the spheres—a path of emanation—from Chaos to Cosmos to self-actualization.

Reference and a note

1. Joscelyn Godwin. The Seven Vowel Sounds in Theory and Practice. Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 1991.

2. The word ananda, which translates as “bliss” means “experience.” The power (Shakti) is the world as we know/experience it projecting from hypostasis (Shiva).

At Peace in the Maw of the World

From the unreal, lead us to the Real

From darkness, lead us to Light

From death, lead us to Immortality

Reach us through and through ourselves

And evermore protect us by Thy sweet, compassionate face.

                                                      --Vedantist prayer derived from the Vedas

Master Peace Sigil September 11 2015

In my last post, I shared how a Hindu spiritual philosophy called Advaita Vedanta and floating in an isolation tank inspired an image about capturing the original self. I’m still on a Vedanta roll. Probably because, after letting go of the trappings of spirituality several years ago, I got curious and accompanied friends to a week-long satsang to hear a teacher that they’ve been following.

Although the satsang took place on a campgrounds, I roomed on a compound that was part Buddhist abbey, part Druid sanctuary, and part organic farm with a fabulous view of Mount McAdams and the Clackamas mountain range. I would’ve been happy enough to just meditate and muck-about at that place, but I did sit through about 28 hrs of lecture/discussion (the satsang) that didn’t need to be more than 3. Still, it was insightful, and I think I returned home a little changed. A bit more dispassionate, temperate, and observant perhaps . . . reflective of what spaciousness is like and what the imposition of a middle-aged human body and its personal circumstances is like, too.

I came home to the 9-11 anniversary, the Syrian refugee crisis, a media circus surrounding a serially adulterous Christian fundamentalist anarchist “martyr” who refuses to do her job and issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, conflagrations across the US West Coast, and the usual morass of American anarchy, zombie apocalypto, and anti-intellectualism. 

I got the idea to make an image of being at peace in the midst of the horrific mayhem we too eagerly like to remind each other that life is—even when it is not in our personal world sphere.  

I pulled out my tin of Caran d’ Arche wax crayons and had a little fun building the image. Then I goaded some friends who follow a kind of New Agey, Wicca lite, manifestation spirituality into building a Chaos Magic-type sigil with me by embellishing the crayon sketch with stickers and cabochons. I then made a series of digital and painted images of the sketch.

Digital version of  my sketch (upper left) and two versions of being at peace within that ferocity. Images print as 18 x 24 Copyright Dee Rapposelli 2015

At Peace in the World Maw Acrylic on stretched sail cloth 24 x 36 copyright Dee Rapposelli 2015

Seeking the Original Self

I'm looking for the face I had before the world was made.  WB Yeats

Although I’ve spent the past several years delving into folk magic, Neopaganism, and the Western Mystery Tradition, my primary spiritual orientation is Advaita Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta is a form of Hinduism that I was introduced to nearly 40 years ago. It is a system that dates back to about the 6^th century CE and is primarily founded in the Upanishads.

The spiritual journey in Advaita Vedanta is a reclamation of the atman, a philosophical term that is translated from Sanskrit to English as “The Self.” Finding Self is realizing who/what you really are. That Self is not your body or personality or “baggage” or the drama of your life. It is also not what you want to become, spiritually speaking. (See my blog entry on my Spiritual Ideal project for more on that). The Self, in Vedantist philosophy, is the mechanism out of which all these interdependently arising things express themselves like suds on the surface of water or a movie against a movie screen or dream in the REM sleep of a dreamer.

The question is: What is it to wake up from the idea of yourself?

Becoming truly real, conscious, and capable of free will begins by realizing the whimsical and fabricated nature of one’s own being—the idea of self—and then detaching from the automaton (the robot) of its personality, habits, and conditioning. Then the person who is the life beneath the mask of selfhood opens her eyes and watches herself reveling through the motions of daily life like a dreamer reveling in lucidity. The dreamer is pristinely aware of what she and everyone and thing around her is and has the ability to truly exercise free will within the field of consciousness and experience. Spiritual types call this “enlightenment.”

This past summer, I became an isolation-tank enthusiast. Yes, a few times a month, I enter a pitch black and virtually soundless chamber and float on my back in buoyant saline for an hour or so.

In the tank, all there is to do is watch the mind as it sinks into a theta state. Ontological thoughts emerge during these sessions—thoughts about being and meaning. And I sometimes think, “What is it to wake up from the idea of myself?” Who am I when I am not the circumstantial preferences, habits, and conditioning the world made into me? In the words of poet W. B. Yeats, what is “the face I had before the world was made”?

In working through how to express this in my art work, I found, in a box of old photos, an elegantly brooding picture of myself at age 3. Its background depicts Christmastide, and there I am standing with a gift-box bow on my head, like a grumpy house cat on the head of which an ornament has been unwantedly placed.

I excised, cleaned up, and colorized the figure in the photo but then opted to use it in monochrome to better convey the brooding composure. The child here is contemplating all those questions raised in that Talking Heads song Once in a Lifetime:

And you may ask yourself 

What is that beautiful house? 

And you may ask yourself 

Where does that highway go to? 

And you may ask yourself 

Am I right?...Am I wrong? 

And you may say to yourself  

My God!...What have I done?!

That image is juxtaposed with a stairway to heaven where perhaps those answers reside ....

Favorite quotes on "Self-Realization":

“If you dissociate from the body and rest in consciousness, you will be happy, serene, and free from bondage.”  --Ashtavakra Samhita 1:4

“He sees the totality of objects appearing and disappearing in the space of consciousness, like reflections in a mirror. Suddenly, all of his thought constructs are destroyed through the recognition, after a thousand lives, of his true, essential nature, which surpasses ordinary experience and is replete in unprecedented bliss. He is struck with awe, mouth gaping. Upon attaining the experience of spaciousness, his true essential nature comes forward. –Spandakarikas, from section 1, verse 11 (from the advaitic Kashmir Shaivite tradition)

The Evil Eye and Evil Averting Charms

Apotropaioi 2  16 x 20 . (counterclockwise:) Bull's horn, amber eye,
 hamsa, cimaruta, coral horn and  natural branch, blue eye

As mentioned in a previous post, my maternal great grandmother was said to be a wise woman—a “witch.”  She had about a dozen children, some of which were lost in the 1918 flu pandemic, and she outlived a few husbands. She divined and cast spells, both healing and threatening, but her main teaching was the same as that of other Italian cunning folk: think positive. The positive-thinking bit was not an extension of the New-Thought Positive-Thinking Manifestation-Spirituality scene, though. It was a strategy to keep the malocchio—the evil eye—away.

Apotropaioi 3 10x12 Bulls horn with eye pendants,
coral amulet (horn and natural coral branch) and
cimaruta

Concerns about the evil eye and apotropaic (evil-averting) magic date back to ancient times and are central to Italian folk magic. It at least seemed to be central to the now lost folk magic tradition of my family. When I moved into my grandfather’s house after his death, I found it chock-full of talismans that were groupings of Christian paraphernalia and evil-averting objects. They took the form of rosaries, blessed Easter Sunday palm and/or devotional scapulars bound up with cornos (“Italian horns”) and similar charms, glass eyes, or horseshoes. Curiously, I found many of these curios dangling from rusted spikes driven into the walls in the backs of closets or concrete pillars in the cellar. A bull’s horn in which two small glass amber eyes were beaded hung over the main entrance of the house. Today that same horn  guards the entrance of my present living space.

What is the evil eye? Simply, it is envy—the green-eyed monster.  The act of turning an envious or covetous glance—or thought—at someone was believed to vampirically sap that person’s life juice. Calamities such as illness (especially the illness or death of a child) or impotence are traditionally attributed to the evil eye. 

Why wear an eye to avert the evil eye? The rationale is that its unwanted energy is being deflected or reflected back on its source, as an image bouncing off a mirror.

In homage to my great grandmother, I went through a period in which I was making eye amulets out of polymer clay and glass. They weren’t really polished enough to market but I used them in these photo still lives celebrating apotropaic charms.

Apotropaioi 1  18 x 24

What have we got here....

Grimoire/spell books.  Modern folk magic practitioners/witches are told to keep grimoire or "Books of Shadows." Historians tell us that some folk practitioners--if they were literate--kept spell books or journals of their magical practice. These journals may have been handed down to an apprentice. "Grimoire" more refer to spell books and journals of ceremonial magicians and sorcerers. A "Book of Shadows" was the name given to a witch's journal by Gerald Gardner (founder of Wicca). It was a term he picked up from a science fiction novel.

Bowl of oil and water. To identify whether the evil eye was afoot and who cast it and to remove the evil eye, the mago or maga would study the patterns of oil dropped in water.

Hamsa hand. An evil-averting charm common to the Judaic tradition. It is said to be of more ancient and ubiquitous Middle Eastern origin and represents the hand/eye of God (or Goddess/Holy Woman).

Nazar.  A Slavic and Middle Eastern version of the evil-averting eye amulet. Why blue? Because blue eyes were uncommon in darker-skinned, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures and symbolized being sapped of color. Amber eyes also are  used as evil-eye averting charms in Italian folk culture. (The bull's horn in the image has an amber eye affixed to it. See the other images in this photo montage. It used to have 2 eyes but one is now lost :-(  ).

Hag stone. Stones with natural holes through them are revered in European folk magic for averting the evil eye and witchcraft. In Italian folk magic, such stones are said to help a person connect with the Fairy realm.

Red coral. Red coral has been used as an evil-averting, health-attracting charm since Roman times. Amulets of coral carved into horns (corno) are meant to protect boys and men from the evil eye. Amulets of natural branches of coral protect girls and women.

Scapular. A tie or fabric necklace of sorts that has lapels with an image of the Madonna or a saint and a short prayer of dedication and protection.

Rosaries. Catholic artifacts used for meditation and prayer that also are used for protection combined with cultural superstitious and magical accouterments in common folk culture.

Blessed palm. On Palm Sunday--a Catholic holy day that precedes Easter, parishioners commemorate the story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, where he was greeted like a rock star. His path was strewn with palm fronds in reverence, and so fresh palm fronds are handed to parishioners on that day. Some folks hang the palm in their homes for blessing and protection (sometimes cutting the pieces to make crosses or other symbols). 

Bull's horn. Another evil-averting items that dates back to very ancient times. The horn represents virility and plenty and is the prototype of the "horn of plenty."

Candle.  A ubiquitous symbol of illumination.

Missing from this image, but seen in the others in this series is the cimaruta. The cimaruta (the "c" is pronounced as "ch") is an amulet meant to represent a sprig of rue. The rue plant is thought to have evil-averting properties in Italian folklore. On each branch of the cimaruta sprig is a magical symbol also meant to avert evil and provide vitality to the wearer.

#evileye

What's a Witch and is a Strega a Strix?

La Striga 14x18 digital image Dee Rapposelli

Many neopagans self-identify as witches. And I did too at one point in my history, thinking myself a chip off the old block when my grandfather, after learning that I dabbled in palm- and card-reading, announced that I was following in the footsteps of his mother. He proudly announced that she was a strega—a witch.

Now, I knew that one of my maternal great grandmothers, who hailed from Bari, Italy, was a wise woman. Like many other people’s Old World great grandmothers, she divined and cast spells and was a living lexicon of folklore, folk healing, and superstition. Her philosophy was that of other Italian cunning folk: keep a positive attitude and not speak of disease or death lest doing so attract negative forces.

           

But my great grandmother was not a strega exactly. Perhaps she was a maga  (a lady mage) or a donna di fiori (an outsider), a fattuchiera (a fixer), or a myriad other regional names that people gave to local healers, diviners, charmers, and “unbewitchers.” No one in their right mind called him- or herself a witch anywhere in Europe until the latter half of the 19^th century when a romantic pseudo-history about paganism and the whole Western Occultist scene began to develop.

For a long blah blah blah about the history of the birth of Neopaganism, Wicca, and modern occultism (plus bibliographical references for claims made in today’s blog), see this post from an old blog of mine from days when I was “in the scene.” Yes, the geek alert is in effect.

Witches were thought to be malignant supernatural creatures that caused disease and ruin. They cavorted with demons and were dedicated to inflicting calamity and despair.  Their imagined human counterparts were bewitchers practicing malicious and coercive magic and diabolism. And the name for such practitioners was streghe.

Strega, the Italian word for “witch” (plural, streghe), is derived from the Latin word for screech owl,  striga. The Greek term, adapted into the English language, is strix (plural, striges). In Greek and Roman mythology striges were vampiric birds of prey that feasted on human flesh and blood—often that of infants. They also liked to seduce and destroy men. By the medieval era, they were equated with vampires.

Striga  14x18 digital print Dee Rapposelli

A strix may basically be a Greco-Roman version of the Semitic Lilith. Although Lilith is nowadays (misguidedly) positioned as an ancient suffragette and paean of female independence and sexual freedom, she originally was a demon responsible for miscarriage, crib death, maternal death, nocturnal emissions, and impotence. The myth of Lilith (beyond the “I wanna be on top” part) was meant to explain why these tragedies occurred. So it seems reasonable to conjecture that myths of striges feasting on human infants and sucking the life out of men were meant to explain infant mortality and emasculation--as the myth of the Semitic demon Lilith was meant to do.

I point this out as a contemplation on what is lost in translation and paradigmatic shifts. Memory, history, and labels are not fixed but fluid, malleable, and fabricated.

Striga/siren studies

For my sirens series, I developed a few pics of creatures that could also qualify as striges. Why? Because I simply have a fascination with mythological forms that, in part, are overtly meant to express something horrifically ambivalent about female sexuality but may have another meaning.  Although the horror of the siren may be a covertext for concepts about sublime spiritual mysteries, the striga is meant to be a monster and explain why monstrous things sometimes happen to human beings—male and female. Until very recently, historically speaking, the strega/witch was meant to explain the same thing.

Let's Get Digital with the Azoth Mandala

An interesting Western mandala, highly searchable on the Web if you type “Azoth” into a Google images search is the twelfth in the series of 14 plates within a 17th century alchemical picture book called Azoth of the Philosophers. It is traditionally attributed to one Basilius Valentinus, said to be a German monk and alchemist, but it is more likely the product of a chemist named Johann Thölde (1565-1614). Valentinus may simply be a legendary character.

Read more details about Azoth on my other blog.  Another one for the intellectually geekier among you.

I took a fascination with alchemy and this particular image several years ago. In fact, I painted a rough image on a board that I used as an altar table for a few years’ foray into Western Occultism. I recently decided to chuck the old, crudely painted image and make a new, improved digital rendering. I even contacted my friend Johnes Ruta, a fine arts curator who runs the Azoth Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, to ask if I could use his likeness as the bearded man who appears in the center of the original image.

Azoth of the Philosophers 24x24 inch digital print by Dee Rapposelli. Want one? Contact me via my Website.

Azoth is a term in philosophical alchemy that refers to latent, transformational energy. Some say that it is derived from an Arabic word for mercury and others that it stands for A-to-Z—a variation on alpha-omega.

The original mandala presumably was a meditation on alchemical laboratory processes as well as a meditation on the transmutation from death and decay to numinous perfection.

The image consists of a 7-pointed star, representing the 7 planets known to the medieval world: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Sol, Mercury, and Luna. Similar to chakras, the planets have symbolic themes that have correspondences with levels of human consciousness. Words that  describe the journey through the spheres are Visita, Interiora, Terra, Rectificando, Invenies, Occultum, and Lapidum (the Visit, the Interiorization, Earth, Rectification, Discovery, the Secret, and the Stone), which have meaning in relation to alchemical laboratory processes as well as the journey toward self-transformation and perfection.

Although the order of the process is intact, I did change the sequence of the planets from the sequence shown in the original image. My intent was to more closely pair the philosophical planets with the chakras of Eastern lore. Why? In part because modern Western folks are more onto Eastern chakra lore—however dummied-down and candy-coated--than their own mystical/Tantric traditions. Medieval alchemists and their forebears did see that planets as energies reflected in their own psyches that had to be journeyed through and transcended in pursuit of freedom and enlightenment. In some systems, Saturn was the viewed as the dastardly demiurge who barred the gates of Paradise and left humans wallowing in their mortality. In others, Saturn was equated with the transcendent godhead and divine ground. My lineup comes from my own personal work with the planets.

The triangle in the image depicts the alchemical trinity of sulfur, mercury, and salt. Sulfur corresponds with the solar principle, mercury with the lunar principle, and salt with matter and the body. The solar principle is symbolized by a king astride a lion, and the lunar principle is symbolized by a queen riding a sea creature.

The doves at the top of the mandala represent the “quintessence”—the fifth element and divine essence to which the alchemical adept aspires. (The traditional image sports a salamander representing the element of fire in the left upper corner and an eagle, representing air in the upper right corner.)

Who is the bearded man in the center of the image?  It is your spiritual ideal and aspiration. Modern-day alchemist Dennis William Hauck claims that medieval alchemists meditated on images like this mandala and that they sometimes placed a mirror in the center of the image to remind themselves that, in the words of an ancient Hindu sage “That thou art.”

Visit Hauck's Alchemy lab  for a more in depth discussion on the Azoth mandala.

Visualizing Your Spiritual Ideal

In traditional religion, the spiritual ideal is the hallowed ideal or personage that a spiritual aspirant wants to emulate or otherwise identify with: Jesus, a saint, a bodhisattva, an avatar, a holy guardian angel, the “higher self” …

(Check out my essay on the Chosen Ideal in a separate blog) For the intellectually geekier among you....

That ideal is usually something treated as “other” although the point is to realize that we are or at least are meant to be that ideal. Most folks opt to idolize their ideal through religious posturing and devotional reveries rather than do the work to really “get,” integrate, and act from their spiritual ideals.

In any case, I tended to think of a “spiritual ideal” in the conventional sense—something having to do with God or angels, devas, avataras, bodhisattvas, or spiritual heroes. My Spiritual Ideal Project was even spurred by an image that popped up during a meditation sit in which I saw myself as a heavenly being—a graceful female entity clad in pink and lime green garb, festooned with flower garlands, sitting on a moon disc and glowing in a sun disc. I began to contemplate what it “feels like” to be that in hopes I could hardwire the thought form into my consciousness. To help solidify the image, I made a picture of it. Then, I began to ask friends what their spiritual ideal was and how I might portray it in portraiture.

I was surprised and impressed by how different folks interpreted the question. Presented here are the first few images of this Project.

My friend DT as The Goddess of Sensual Desire. I was kind of  surprised when DT's response to "What is your spiritual

ideal?" was "I want to be the goddess of sensual desire" because, before beginning this project, I equated "spiritual ideal" with some ethereal lofty religiously spiritual concept. But she honestly really does value the "good life,," and her response helped me get my feet back on planet Earth.  My first thoughts were to work her image into a Babalon Rising type of motif, but I wanted to convey the  luxury, joy, and hospitality that reflects her ebullient personality. I constructed this from freehand drawing and photo manipulation in PhotoShop Elements. It prints as a 24 x 24 inch glicee.

My good friend EC, author of the blog Neognostica's Book of  Thoth--A Modern Translation Ed is into planetary magic inspired by work developed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. His response to my question was to say that he wanted the wisdom of the cosmos to be reflected in his actions--like the famous Hermetic adage:  As above, so below. H suggested I make an image of a fellow  walking on a lake in which the planets are reflected. This image, is constructed from freehand drawing and photo manipulation in PhotoShop Elements. It includes pics of planets and landscape from NASA.  It prints as an 18 x 24 glicee.

SS is the head steward of the Scalzi Riverwalk Nature Preserve in Stamford, Connecticut. She intrepidly went into a neglected, overgrown, roadside riverwalk that had become a haven for drug activity and illicit loitering and cleaned it up for safe and thriving community use. Together with a band of volunteers and folks training to be gardeners, horticulurists, and land managers, she is restoring the area to its natural habitat--on a shoestring budget: weeding-out invasive species, planting and protecting native plants, and helping to restore native wildlife to the area.  When I asked her what her spiritual ideal was, she simply replied, " When I die, my remains must be placed in an oak grove." She proceeded to tell me that oak--and trees in general--do not naturally grow as singular plants but grow in groves where their roots intertwine so that that grove is actually one single organism. Her spiritual aspiration is to be one with that. This was the first image I ever made that is completely constructed from photo manipulation (no drawing) in PhotoShop Elements. She would never go for that glam shift I put her in--but I figured she could look a little sexy if she were an oak-grove sylph.  It prints as an 18 x 24 image on paper.

Sirens Energy of the Depths

First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead men's bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them.

--from The Odyssey by Homer

Sirens…luridly irresistible mythical creatures that lure men to their deaths with the sweetness of their songs. Half woman, half bird, sirens are most famously known from Homer’s epic the Odyssey. They are depicted as living on the rocky isles off the coast of Sicily. There they entrap passing sailors with intoxicating sounds that cause profound stupor resulting in death. When Odysseus and his crew manage to resist them, the sirens fly into craven tiffs and take fatal nosedives from their perches on rocky cliffs. They descend to the Netherworld where, instead of singing, they wail in mourning for the dead.

So maybe this motif is drenched in metaphors about sexual impulse, gender conflicts, orgasm, loss of self, and death. But I read somewhere some time ago that sirens may be related to the Egyptian Ba—the part of the soul that traverses the underworld. Along those lines, I also somewhere brushed by the speculation that sirens—and mermaids, too—were psychopomps, beings that met folks as they transitioned from life to death and guided them to and through the Underworld. The fatal songs of sirens (later attributed to mermaids) may be symbolic of truths a person can’t handle while embodied. Like seeing the face of God, the song of the siren will wrench you from your mortal existence and deposit you in another mode of being. After all sirens were said to be sisters of the Morae (the Fates) who spun, wove, and cut the thread of life and may have been the collective prototype of the triple goddess.

Is the song of the siren horrible or ineffable, a curse or a grace, does it communicate a wisdom so profound as to snap the mortal coil and its lifeline and lead beyond, beyond to the far shore? Such questions fascinate me along with the idea, derived from dissection of myths and fairy tales, that a dragon (in us) really wants to be a princess and can transform into one when saved (from itself) through a hero’s transformative journey from soul to spirit.

#mermaids