The magical and mystical art, illustration, and insights on Eastern spirituality and Western Mystery Tradition of writer and/artist Dee Rapposelli (Soror ZSD23), author of The Seal of Secrets of the World and the Sorcerers and Magi series
Yes, I know folks who play lovely meditative muzak with singing bowls. This material is not that.
Some years ago, I created a series of recordings using tams tams and singing bowls. Here are 2 samples of ferocious gong music. The first is an unedited Chaos Magic working--an acoustic sigil --created several years ago when I was immersed in the scene. There's a few seconds delay. Patience is a virtue. Included are the sounds of a 24 inch crystal singing bowl and 24 inch symphonic gong.
The second piece uses a 24 inch crystal singing bowl, a 24 inch symphonic gong, a 24 inch specialty gong that resembles crashing waves, and a 22 inch wind gong.
Consciousness wrapped in thought acrylic on canvas 26 x 32 copyright Dee Rapposelli 2015
.
Popular spiritual teachers, such as Pema Chodron and Eric Tolle, talk about spaciousness and
presence. Spaciousness is what you basically feel when you are truly present .
. . when you are not spinning stories, judgments, and comparisons about what
is happening to and around you. When you access your spaciousness, then you are
who and what you really are and you experience Reality. You find “the face you
had before the world was made,” in the words of WB Yeats. The experience is one
of fascination and contentment. In Sanskrit, the ecclesiastic language of
Hinduism, this is called ananda, which
translates as “bliss.” It is the conscious experience of being. Along with
Consciousness and Being, this Bliss-Experience
is said to be the nature of God, and so God described as
Satchidananda—Existence-Consciousness-Bliss in Vedic Hinduism. God is also called Brahman in this system, and this word is so old that the original meaning is unknown. It is thought to mean “That Which Spreads Out.” That which spreads out in
both vast spaciousness and also creative potential and actualization. It is All
This and what underlies and transcends all this.
I have come to a place in my life and practice in which the
flux of thoughts, feelings, judgments, etc. feel like heavy, gripping
impositions on “me,” and so I experience myself as consciousness wrapped
(instead of rapt) in thought. It is an excellent place to come to. I think I
can “work with” this condition more than I had the insight to in the past
despite how much more spiritually nerdy and disciplined I once was. My present
experience helps me distinguish consciousness and true will from habits and
conditioning that run their programs and are expressed as the incessant
barrage of reactive thoughts and emotions. It causes me to be very open and
kind to myself—and to others—because I can divest myself of the burden of
judgments and expectations.
“I was born with magic”—in the words of the protagonist in
my fave TV series The Adventures of Merlin (which I shamelessly view over and
over again on Netflix). We’re all born with magic. It’s the innate human
ability to dream and imagine and have fantastical experiences that, for some, result
in glorious creativity and innovation and advance humankind. Humans are the
only beings on Earth that can build castles in the sky—and convince themselves
and others that those castles are “real.” Wonderful and perilous. Right? What
my personal foray into magic and mysticism has taught me is that the human experience of the magical, mystical,
supernatural, occult, spiritual, and religious is real and valid, but the explanations
we give for our “otherworldly” (or more accurately “innerworldly”) experiences are
largely conjecture—a big creative guess about what weird thing just happened.
Apotropaioi 2
The explanations get jimmied up into a belief, a doctrine, and
then into a ritual, a standard, a paradigm. This works in many ways, but take,
for example, the child terrorized by things-that-go-bump-in-the night. When I
was a child of about age 10 years, I was a given my own bedroom. It was a small
room in which was a door that led to the attic and a steam radiator. It was a
decent space with groovy, optical-illusion black and white wallpaper that my
parents put up as a decorative treat for me (it being the early 70s), but I
spent weeks that first winter being absolutely terrorized by a phantom knocking
on the attic door. I finally got the nerve, late one night, to go into my
parents’ bedroom to alert them to the situation. My snoozing mother opened one
eye when I whined about my predicament and growled in cruel exasperation, “It’s
the radiator. Get back to bed!” (Not only did the steam radiator hiss, it made knocking sounds.) Boy,
did I feel stupid. . .
But perhaps my mother felt that way about 7 or 8 years prior
when I was old enough to speak and kept blabbing, in fine detail, about a guy
named Guy who my mother feared was a dude shadowing us. She was understandably
feeling terrorized until an artist friend came for a visit and began sketching
a pic of a man who he announced was Guy—“Little Niecies” imaginary friend.
Tarocchi
Apotropaioi 3
Where am I going with this? Well, Halloween is approaching—as
well as some other holidays. That means, in this free 21st century ubermulticultural,
anarchic American society, that everyone comes out of the woodwork to impose
their beliefs and values on others and also reframe and impose rules on the
beliefs and celebratory traditions of others. As for Halloween—a mardi-gras–like
harvest festival in which the macabre and diabolical are spoofed—what we get is
an eyeful of missives from fundamentalist Christians on how Halloween is a Satanic
orgy plucked from the pages of the Malleus
Maleficarum (the book that, despite popular understanding, was never given
credence by the medieval Catholic Church and whose authors were denounced by it
. . . just sayin’). We also get stories, by and for Muggles, about the rise of
the modern witchcraft and pagan movements, whose adherents celebrate the antique
Northern European cultural festival of Samhain (from which Halloween was
adapted) as a religious one. For more information about this, I refer anyone reading
this to an essay by historian Ronald Hutton, which was published in The Guardian last year.
Is it OK to revel in and also spoof our superstitions about
and fascination with magic and the supernatural for Halloween and also laugh in the face of
death and the ugly unknown it represents ? Sure. It is a bonding human experience. Seeing traditions in that way makes them poignant and memorable for me beyond whatever beliefs we construct as their rationale.
The images are all photos from my magical still lifes series, with the image below being an example of digital photo manipulation.
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
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 6th 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)
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.
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 19th
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.
