Mandala: A Demonstrated Democracy

Posted on November 28, 2012 by janeadamsart

What is democracy?

The word is built from the Greek demos, the people, and krateo, to rule: kratos strength, hardness. Demokratia “is a form of government in which all eligible citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives.” (Wikipedia.) “Democracy allows eligible citizens to participate equally – either directly or through elected representatives – in the proposal, development and creation of laws… to enable the free and equal practice of political self determination.”

Unfortunately, “democracy” as a political slogan, is often used, to justify invading other nations.

Whether we argue, or whether we are able to listen, is crucial to our grasp of what is democracy, and what is the tyrant or oligarch within ourselves. What can we do about it?

Here is a drawing of a recent group work. It went on for about ten days. The circles around the rim are the 22 participants – the symbols they represented. Each, while journeying the Tree of Life to form a collective Merkabah (Chariot), picked a Path, a Sefira, a Dakini-oracle card, and an Animal of the Zodiac, and sat facing each other, like the spokes of a wheel. I was asked to draw it, and copies were distributed to the group as it concluded.

Reflecting each other, the interconnectedness joins up the dots … towards the higher, deeper, unifying intelligence of our humanity. The Greeks in discourse sat not in rows, but in a circle. In shamanic cultures, the pipe of peace is passed … or the mace, around the circle, for the holder to speak.

Universal peace pipe dream – A sculpture from one of my favourite blogs, http://fromthomas77b.wordpress.com/

This is group work – a human mandala focus. The character of each person is expressed in the symbols they picked out to work with, in the framework and security of the Circle. Mandala is a true democracy, where everyone faces each other and sees everyone else. In the linear mode however, we are unconscious.. We sit in rows with our backs to each other, facing the priest, but we do not see each other.

The Circle has a group leader, whose focus pilots the journey and outcome. With three other people, he or she represents the Four directions and elements at the Circle’s Cardinal points as a framework. This creates a grounding and a solidity for everyone in the group. All the participants, as they emerge through their own heart centres – Tifareth – are teachers to one another. We do breath work, chanting, and a sequence of guided meditations along the paths and triads on the Tree of Life; and we share what is happening individually. Breaking successively the granthi-knots of (1) – ancestral condioning; (2)- the soul’s relationship to Karma and Dharma, and (3) the knot of the mental conditioning, we develop a healing group Consciousness. Releasing and emptying the burdens we carry, creates space in our being. This is the Chariot (Merkabah), by which we pass through the veils which separate ego from soul, and soul from Spirit … to receive Binah, Hokhmah, Kether.

The Tree of Life, showing the granthi knots at personal, soul and spirit levels. These are crossroads in our human development.

In 2004 I participated in the creating of such a Mandala, and this is the message I received: (the three-fold Kether on the Tree of Life reminds me of it …)

“Christ said, “Talitha cumi – arise again.” So renew your Soul Covenant with the Divine. Genesis is revisited; so with the radiant light of protection, serve the Tradition and the Oracle. You have toiled in what was spoiled. A thousand years is long enough! Return to Egypt and its starry desert, and walk the carpet of the firmament.”

“With courage when snow flies in your face, shake it off.
Close sometimes your ears to what the heart is saying, and do not feel its lament.
If there is no God on earth – we ourselves are gods! Adam Cadmon, our completion.

“I saw three Suns in the sky –
Binah, Hochmah, Kether.
They stayed so still,
and they did not leave me.”

(Part of this message came from a Schubert song, translated by Lois Phillips in her book Lieder Line by Line, and channeled for that occasion.)

Rose Savitri

This type of work cannot be written down in books. It is an oral tradition; it is oracular, arising and flowering spontaneously. Rain falls in circles on water. The oral work gives a direct and in-formed experience, which then matures into ways of expression. However, for it to be effective, there has to be a concerted spiritual Will, balance and discipline within the group.

I feel that all over the world, unknown to the superficial spiritual “marketing”, similar initiatives come up through the ground. They form a human root system beyond race, gender, class and religious background. Trans-continentally, a holistic ecology of Consciousness vibrates along our woody veins, nitrates and airways. The world of creative imagination – when focussed – sooner or later manifests, in the world.

The Aquarian awakening does not elevate a guru-ish figure on a pedestal. Likewise, we seek to balance our personality-pressures with the Self – the higher good. We are all fallible, and equally in this process, respect one another. We have loved and lost. We have lived and died. We have strayed and returned. It is called the Path of Return.

The principle – moving beyond the habit of person-dominated spirituality or “organization” – is enabled in the hidden spiritual circles of the world. Gravity flows in spirals and circles; straight lines do not exist; we are not rows, but curves. The curves celebrate the voluptuous Goddess. The principle is transparent and light on its feet. The principle is dedicated, yet unencumbered by property, fund raising or zeal. In harmony with the Laws of Nature and magnetism, it finds always a roof. The mountain, tree and heart together (see below), form a vessel – the tabernacle covers the need. Upon the stillness of the mountain, the tree grows, and the heart’s abundance is aligned; everything is possible.

This is I Ching Hexagram 53: Wind/Wood over Mountain/Keeping Still:

“A tree on a mountain, developing slowly, firm root, is visible from afar, and influences the whole landscape. Tranquillity within and penetration without: correct relationships of cooperation. Haste is unwise. Gentleness is adaptable but penetrating. Inner calm. Slow progress perseveres.”

Richard Wilhelm (precis)

During this time-period, tipping the Mayan calender at 2012 towards Aquarius, a new Great Circle opens, with problems that are inherited and problems that are “new”. As the self-encircling figure of infinity (8) passes through the hour, our perception of time is altered, at first subconsciously. The long-term alteration of the way we see things – awareness – is as radical as the thought of geophysical polar-axis shift or flip, which many prophesy, project and profess.

Who knows? The interior is beyond measure, and our entire worldview is a creation from thought. Life goes on.

It is in our inner evolution to perceive time not in a linear way, but as a pattern of interpenetrating circles and depth. Here … below the strata of wars, earthquake, climate change and wealth imbalance … the quantum leap of our humanity awakes almost unseen, eye to eye: the lighthouse keepers.

Embroidery by Elisabeth

The Word is breathed from heart to heart. Who knows where the heart was born or began? A mandala of souls is an eye, a fountain.

A human Mandala or Wheel: Buddha with encircling Boddhisattvas

Sacred Geometry and Relationships

Sacred architecture is based, almost universally, on a stake in the ground and a piece of string. The string pegs out a circle around the point: the Circumpunct, symbol of the Sun. The stake is repositioned on the circumference, and a new circle with the same radius is drawn. In the same way, persons giving one another space, may dialogue. The oval vesica-pisces is also called a pomegranate.

“In the underworld, Pluto gives Persephone a pomegranate of which she eats, a symbol of femininity and fructification. By … taking this principle within herself, she binds herself automatically to return to the Underworld every year, for only in the descent into the Underworld is new life possible; it requires death to gain rebirth.”

Gareth Knight

On the same principle of embodiment, we investigate and regenerate our inner psyche. From the seed in the ground, the root descends, then a little shoot begins to grow. As in the Seal of Solomon, as in all the Eastern Yantras and Mandalas, ascent and descent pass through each other in the heart. From vesica pisces – the Fish sigil of the early Christians – the Flower of Life proliferates.

On this architectural ground-plan, proportions are produced, the arches constructed, the Sanctuary is built: the vertical through the horizontal plane, the male through the feminine; and it stands. Walk tall, as the terrestrial magnetic divines the Pole Star. We live as a myriad pendulums from that One axis. We are the Circle around the Point. But the point is within ourself!

… and is it any thing?

What are Politics? Is it a group of people working for the common good, or is it the opposite? Polites in the Greek means “citizen” and politeia means “the condition of a state”. Many words beginning with “pol”, “poly”, suggest a head-count – the many – and the application of some kind of restraint. Politics are broadly, the art of government. It is an art – a broth with many cooks.

The problem with parliament is with rows of partisans shouting each other down. They do not yet know how to interconnect their ideals to serve the nation’s interest. The same is observed in my mental process as in yours. What do I believe in? What do I crusade about? What really works? We cannot expect governments to ask this question, until we are capable to ask it in ourselves, our opinions; till we find out what really works within ourselves for for the good; and dialogue is so different … from debate, the warring monologue.

It is the capacity to hear and appreciate another’s story. A circle is a seamless robe of democracy, connected in all its parts. It contains debate, story-telling, dialogue, argument and ultimately reconciliation. Ultimately it brings conflict into resolution.

Our awakened inner life needs an environment of harmony and peace. A leader wears a mantle of authority with, but not over others; to enable others to come to their own authority. In the process of truth all, including the leader, reveal their vulnerability. True Authority is unmistakable. It uplifts the culture of the people, and their needs. Love gives space for others to be who they are.

We need to quieten, to give room.

Flower of night, 1986

“I am a hidden treasure who longs to be known. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift a stone, and I am there. We are not of the world, but in it. We walk just about one-mile-an-hour ahead of the tide coming in. It is tiny, but enough.”

sunflower, fish and paddle-steamer 1988

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 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). Published recently online: The Reckless Fruit in two parts – here are the links to click

All 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/

Sacred India Tarot Archive: 2,3 & 4 of Pentacles – The Awakening of Buddha

Posted on November 26, 2012 by janeadamsart

What are Pentacles?

In the Minor Arcana, the Tarot Pentacles are its “Earth” suit – the plane of manifestation. A Pentacle is a conscious mark or sigil. The cross-section of a tree with its concentric rings, is a sigil, a Yantra. Flowers and their sacred geometry are sigils; so are the Fibernacci series, the spiral, and the laws of growth. In every mark of nature, and everywhere in life, if we care to look, the sigils are engraved. They appear also as omens. They require intelligent reading. Intelligence is of a deeper order than “cleverness”.

Fibonacci series pentacle, by Keith Critchlow (“The Hidden Geometry of Flowers”)

A Pentacle is classically a five-part pattern or circle, embodying humanity. The Coins, by which this suit is also known, are Currency. They bear the mark of trade. Financial currency with its gold or paper standard, is a “promissory note”. It is no more visible in essence, than electric current, the current of life: our imagination gives it power. Our coinage is a symbol, with its own temples, altars and acolytes. It depends what we believe in; but without adequate means and/or a nourished belly, it is hard for the Great Work to touch base. The Currency is the undercarriage – monetary, linguistic or psychic – which helps us/the Great Work, to survive; a relative freedom from anxiety. Best is a balance of all three. The Currency is a balanced state of health.

shell spiral

For the Sacred India Tarot minor-arcana, the Pentacles or Coins are “disks”. Vishnu and other gods within Brahman the All, carry a diskus in one of their many arms. The diskus is a sport, a weapon, a wheel. It is thrown, it spins like a planet, it reaches target, comes to ground. The Wheel of Karma likewise comes around, to wake us up. Justice is the Law of action upon reaction.

Wood bird yantra

In the Buddha’s story, we decided to let the Disks be wheels. The Buddha, who overcame the traditional habits of denial, and touched the ground all through his enlightenment, is often called The Wheel Rolling King. He has the Wheel of Dharma; what comes around, comes round, as a Kalpa, seasonal leaf through trees, or an insect life-cycle. What comes round comes around, in our life, to help us untie the knot.

Paul Foster Case

The Buddha Nature is itself a sigil: right conduct, compassion, the Great Middle Way. The shining Pentacle of Gautama Buddha’s lifetime among us, was and is his awareness and concern for human suffering, disease and death. What can be done? How can freedom be found, through these vicious and perpetual circles? He applied himself to pioneer a way which was practical, and – like Jesus a few centuries later – overturned rigid, doctrinal tables in the temple of the One.

The Buddha’s long life and teaching is supremely practical. Practice is the way of the Pentacles, the Suit of Earth.

Two of Pentacles

Rohit sent me this in 2003, as an early image-reference marked “Two of Pentacles”. It is the only one I have. I am not sure what he had in mind. A woman offers fruit – or sea-urchins? to another woman. They share a Mona Lisa smile, or secret. Perhaps it is the Buddha’s feminine nature – the women who surrounded his pampered youth; his early sexuality and experience. The most beautiful portraits of the Buddha all have a heavy-lidded cosmic tenderness – the smile which just suggests an invitation.

In his instructions for the Suit, Rohit wrote to me:

“A prince in the lap of luxury, surrounded by beautiful girls, in a garden, walled off. There is poverty sickness and suffering on the outside but his father has kept him from unpleasant sights, determined he will never know of pain and decay – to the extent of removing dead leaves, branches and flowers at night!

“He is a very capable and intelligent young man but he is also being stifled in this curious ignorance he is being kept in.

“Compositionally this is not going to be easy – I know.”

My solution is graphic – the young man in his garden of delight, is disturbed by an intuition beneath the surface of things. He awakes uneasily. Is not this so also, if we give too much attention to a meditative bliss, and not enough to where we are? What are we starving or neglecting? Balanced spirituality must be embodied. The Buddha found this out by trial and error: first, through sheer empathy, he would endure his own period of starvation.

His eye of Consciousness – rather like ancient Egyptian profiles – opens sideways from the eyes of life. It is; it will be; it always was.

In many teachings, the blind lead the blind. Studying this card, makes me reflective.

The Wheels are the old teaching: as above so below. The beggar woman touches the wheel as if to implore divine grace. Her baby hasn’t milk – her husband is blind.

Correspondence March 2003 – Gautam (the publisher), Rohit and Jane:

“Dear Gautam – got yours and Rohit’s … Re Ace Pents, I certainly did not know that the ladies should be dressed Vedically. I will see if I can reduce them. Maybe they are not needed at all?” (Later, the extra ladies, or birth-helpers, were removed, so the Buddha’s mother is on her own – see the Ace of Disks Birth of Buddha (earlier post.)

“I’ve started on Two of pents, and plan to send it to you when I’ve done one or two others as well. Am recovering from bronchitis and not quite up to scratch, but much better this week. I would like from you just a few more hints on the ‘teaching’ in each one. The idea of using the Dharma wheel as the coin, came spontaneously, and can be used in each card of the suit. But I would like indications from you as to where you would like them placed geometrically. For instance in Two of pents, the design has Prince Siddhartha in the garden, top half, with a (smaller) wheel in the background, rather like the sun – and two less fortunates (whom he senses but cannot see) in the bottom half. They also have a golden wheel above them, and are divided from the Prince by a wall.

“As I said before, I’m doing the minor arcana in a slightly simpler style than the major – otherwise it will take years. In most decks, the minor are more symbolic and less literal than the major; some are purely geometric. My aim is to try to keep a consistent formal design and colour scheme through the suit. Any suggestions?”

“Dear gautam and jane – I have nothing to add to what jane says here, it is all great stuff. There is no message or teaching coming forth from each card in the suits, unless it is the key-word association. Perhaps that would help. I will send off a list.

“Jane’s ideas on card no.2 in Pentacles is great. I do not wish to get in between her and her obviously inspired streak! she is on the right track. I agree we need to keep time in mind, but still, the minor arcana cannot be a dip or drop in the quality of effort. We are aiming to compete with the best in the world. The Mythic Tarot would perhaps be the only real competition we have. A few extra months does not matter – this pack is for being done to last many centuries! Since each suit is a theme and story inspired one, it will take some time, more time than if we just drew the pentacles or wands. That is an acceptable slow process. With regard, ROHIT“.

Fragment from Rohit – “… would indicate, in fact sometimes wearing considerably less. (You could not possibly be expected to know this, and I missed communicating it, because it is simply taken for granted, and not even part of normal consciousness.) In fact India was a gorgeous and sensual place then, the richest country of the ancient and classical world. The pentacles suit should reflect that spectacle and grandeur. You cannot possibly overdo the ‘effects of opulence’, especially the use of gold ornamentation, if you wish to draw it that way. The south-east Asian and Indian visual references we sent, will help here. For the whole pack in fact, we should keep Opulence, Splendour and Gorgeousness as keywords. I think we are doing very well indeed, and creating something genuinely valuable for the world here.”

3 of Pentacles

Rohit’s Instructions: “Curiosity drives the young prince out of his faux paradise. He sees Four Sights from his chariot , Disease, Old age, Death and a Sage who seems to have found peace in his meditation.

“Again to cram all of this into a rectangular space is going to be difficult, but I trust you will find some way round the difficulty. It is regarded as a great victory in Buddhist literature for the human spirit, so the sense of potential and urgency the prince feels is central – not the harrowing sights.”

Visual References for SITA pentacles/disks 3 – The Four Sights. Note the Wheel

The Earth disks tip the scales from the Sky disk, with the desire to see and understand the reality of suffering: poverty, disease, old age and death. These “sigils” (pentacles) shocked Prince Siddhartha profoundly, and altered his course of life from the local to the universal plane. On his fourth sally from the palace, he met a sage whose serenity (despite starvation) sustained a blessing on the piteous human condition. There must be a way …

Rohit’s Instructions for Card 4 –

“The story explains the context but it is very clear he left when his wife and newly born child were sleeping. He left on horseback instead of his chariot to confound any pursuers. Again the situation is regarded as a huge triumph for consciousness.

“There has always been a tension inherent in this episode, he is refusing to do his duty to follow his entelechy! If that can be conveyed it would be great…”

Four Sights, Signs, Wheels … the Law is aligned, and the household sleeps. The Prince rides forth on muffled hooves, in an etheric shroud to protect his destiny. Yet he bears in his mind, his wife and child. In due course, they became his devotees. The Buddha’s tempo of evolution is seemingly accelerated, in relation to theirs.

Throughout sacred and esoteric history, we come across different time-signatures in tandem, like a raga with two or more rhythms through it.

Correspondence – April 2003

“Hi jane – card one looks much better now. We’re very happy with 2,3 and 4, and suggest u just ‘go with the flow’. … Warm regards, Gautam.

Rohit: “It perfectly captures the sense of luxurious blindness to reality and the imperative for change, which is the message of the Two in the suit, anyway.

“Three is dramatic, even somewhat harrowing, but that is exactly what the young prince must have experienced in the Four Sights – something that knocked the bottom out of his shallow ‘successful’ world. It is a very strong composition indeed, made all the more powerful by substituting a skull, which has archetypal resonance, over the more obvious choice of a corpse.

“The Four has a somewhat Mughal miniature feel to it, with its split perspective to indicate simultaneity of action in different places. I think the prince has never looked so regal as at the moment he is going to renounce all the trappings of royalty. As always, Jane draws animals marvellously! It is a poignant card, not a dramatic one.”

“Painting the Buddhist Wheel of Life”, photo by Scott Aaron, 2divineways.com

Shyam-Kali Yantra, 18th century Rajasthan. Yantra with magic pentagon symbolizing the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, ether – may be vitalized as a safeguard against destruction and evil, and for good fortune.

Sri Chakra Yantra created in an electronic vibration field, an experiment in the translation of sound into vision. A similar experience is ‘sensed’ during ritual worship when the yantra pattern ‘dematerializes’, appearing to dissolve into a sound-pattern or vibration field of spoken mantras. Still for a film by Ronald Nameth.

These two Yantras are not of the Buddhist tradition, but they serve to demonstrate the universality of the Wheel: the precious seeds we bury in our lives.

For all other Sacred India Tarot posts, look under Recent Posts, 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 The deck is copyrighted (c) 2011 to the publishers, Yogi Impressions Books pvt, and available also on Amazon and internationally.

Jane

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.

Published recently online: The Reckless Fruit in two parts
– here are the links to click

Maestri of the Ageless Wisdom

Posted on November 22, 2012 by janeadamsart

Reflect on and visualise Paul Foster Case, his kindly welcome to the Supernal Reality – the Magic of Light – his physical delicacy and American accent, his quiet suit and tie … very different to the dark rollercoaster of Lucas’s invitation to Veronica, in The Demon Lover**. I love Dion Fortune’s writing, not only does it show where the open doors are; it is powerful and beautiful. It proceeds at a slow tempo, packed with landscape and awakening, dark and light, and nourishes the soul. Thank you!

Dion Fortune in 1927

The compassionate balance of the dark and light, is the tao to follow. So in my studies, try to hear Paul Foster Case talking. (and the sounds of tao, bota, iao) Remember the contact is intimated, person to person, and develop that. At times during the day, and late evening … happiness, a strength of wing opening, a thankyou. Who knows why? What aligns? Floating clear?

Paul Foster Case floated clear from the golden dawn’s necessary rigidity in the 1920s; like Dion Fortune (and Israel Regardie?), he spelled out things that were muffled up, and brought the teachings on alchemy much closer to the physical plane. Those pioneers were of this movement of the Maggidim touching and embodying the biosphere, more and ever more so, since that decade between the Great Wars. Great tides contain many small ones going in and out within them.

The wellbeing is the touching of the planes, the filling of the polarity field, with an enhanced wave pattern. It broadens the way and makes it simpler to walk. Irrelevant tensions and fogs lose initiative. Words float around like “thanksgiving” and “blessing”. The highway is afoot. The freedom of the Holy Spheres expands within the earth plane. It feels like dying, but there is no death. There is no discontinuity. Flow with the subtle mercury, the electrical ions, through axis and the ripples.

Thou art the living embodied: ADONAI.

When I hear Paul Foster Case the musician and writer and teacher, I hear Master R behind him. My perception of this relationship slowly matures.

I can “go it alone”, but that reaches a sell-by date. The vitality reduces, or retreats. It is vital to retain and renew my contact with the Maestri of the Ageless Wisdom: their current.

“We cannot pretend to have the Consciousness.” We know that like Everest, it is there.

The kingdom is sought for its own sake. Even the idea that everything else adds on to it, loses strength when I as the Chariot stand within the sea and am filled with the silence of the Great Waters.

Self enquiry, whether spelled in the Rosicrucean or the Vedanta way, is the Key.

“The sword flashes forth
from the heart of the Mother
into the heart of the Son
and its course is the path of the Disposing Intelligence.”

The Book of Tokens

Here is a page from the music Master R wrote, when he was in London circa 1750. His music is kept in the British Museum Library. I obtained copies from a member, and can publish more here, or email to anyone interested. He was renowned as a violinist and chamber musician. He wrote songs also, and a short opera. It is music of its period, not unlike C P E Bach. It is written down by a Maestro who neither dies nor is born, but prevails, and adopts the gentler dress of the time. His thought, particularly in this piece, is serene.

To follow the Master’s line of musical thought, is a meditation which strikes deeper than words and ideas … to where the sounds and images are.

**The Demon Lover (and other novels) by Dion Fortune,
are published by the Society of the Inner Light.
Her aim was for the novels to give the practice,
where The Mystical Qabalah gives the theory.

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)

Jyotish – Drawings of the Vedic Astrology Deities

Posted on November 19, 2012 by janeadamsart

Jyotish means “the science of Light”. This term is applied to Indian astrology, and particularly to its Vedic pantheon. The science of Light is rooted in Earth’s relationship to the constellations. Our western astrology, due to the precession of the equinox over the millenia, is not aligned with the constellations. It has shifted about 23 degrees from them, so far. It interprets the Zodiac signs as phases – segments of the arc – of Earth’s journey around the Sun.

Both approaches however, deliver profound experiential insights.

In 1998, I was asked by Andrew Foss, president of the British Association for Vedic Astrology, to draw for him a set of the grahas, or planetary deities.

Six months later, Andrew’s mentor David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) of the Vedic Institute in New Mexico, commissioned from me another set of the grahas, to illustrate his book The Astrology of the Seers.

On both occasions I sat down to draw the gods consecutively, one each day of the week, Sunday through Saturday, and the North and South Nodes: Rahu and Ketu.

Here are both sets, with accompanying notes. The first set was drawn for Andrew who is now about to publish them in his own book; they are his copyright, and here is his link: http://www.LearnVedicAstrology.com <http://www.LearnVedicAstrology.com>
http://www.VedicSoftware.com <http://www.VedicSoftware.com> .

The 20 sketches of the grahas became an inspirational basis for The Sacred India Tarot.

Firstly, Ganesh. No enterprise begins without invoking the auspicious creativity of the Elephant God, a son of Siva:

Sunday

Notes on Surya: Vishnu means “the one that pervades”. Thus the Surya – SUN – resonance.

As well as his benevolence, Surya’s is a destructive, cleansing, Self-willing power. In Indian culture, he is drought, fire and death as well as truth and creativity. In Egyptian initiations, it was said “Osiris is a Dark God.” To grow, we must confront.

The Sun is the power of light (Jyotish) – the translation onto the negative-film of the material plane. The real Light appears as darkness on our retina.

Surya’s beauty has an awesome simplicity – a pitiless and denuded dharma. He is wheel-rolling. In Surya, all orbits and revolutions turn at different angles to one another, merely to hint at the Whole dimension of his mandala. The black in his yantra suggests the corona, and sunspots: solar flares and magnetic bursts.

His yantra here, is tilted. His force arises out of its centre on a different plane. He has a superb innocence. Aruna the Dawn drives his chariot, but It could be as well be Krishna; because Surya is akin to the Vishnu archetype, the Sustainer, the all pervading.

Light is generated in Surya, to every direction and field of space. Nothing reflects or is reflected. It is all Self creating. There is no polarization or “effect” in the intoxicating nucleus of the Oneness.

In Jyotish, a Sun ruled personality may lack sensitivity to others, and is also not very impressionable in the astral field, i.e. does not have occult “experiences” – particularly if Earth and Saturn are strong in the chart.

Monday

Chandra, the deity of the Moon, is also SOMA, the nectar of the gods.

Fluidity, receptivity, clouds, sea, an infinite series of crescents, reflected light … let us form a vessel; attunement, watery, childlike – a polarized light is drawn across the heavens.

The foundation of Vedic Astrology has 27 Lunar Mansions and 108 segment/divisions (27 times the 4 lunar quarters). The fast mover around the constellational field, absorbs every resonance, and determines the constellar imprint at birth, for a lifetime’s cycles. In India, the Moon is the central significator, more so than the Sun. Indian and Western astrology have varying cultural and climatic nuances, and a different “harmonic” chart structure, but interpretation brings forth the same principles, like different sides of the same leaf.

The grahas or gods are all represented as male – even the Moon and Venus. This is because it is taken for granted in Indian metaphysics, that every god has his Shakti or feminine half, and cannot operate without her. So some of them are profoundly androgenous.

Chandra carries a mace and a white night lily. Chandra’s complexion is silvery white. His mystic vehicle is drawn by a young antelope; the three wheels are lunar-phase Yantras. The ten horses are the seminal energy of Brahma’s child Atri, spilt in all the 10 directions (damsels) and received by earth.

Chandra expresses the love of children, of the young in all the Universe. Light giver, boon bringer, he touches surfaces, moving the lunar tide.

Chandra is “the son of Varuna (the winds) Lord of the Oceans, from which the Moon rises.” During the waning half of the month, (moonth) 36,000 gods feed on his nectar and exhaust him. During the waxing half, Surya feeds him with the water of the Oceans, and he regains strength and fullness.

A Lunar ruled personality is highly sensitive, receptive, yielding: susceptible also to shadow persuasions and deception.

Tuesday

Mangala, Mars, is the son of Earth. That is why he does well in Capricorn. For all his energy and drive, he represents aspects of the tamas-guna – i.e. enclosure, systems, the trained warrior, control and obedience, skill. The tamas-guna gives form to the fiery, centrifugal rajas-guna. (See Tree of Life, Three Gunas, at the end of this post.)

Mangala’s spear, club and the demon-destroying Skanda on peacock, are the spirit of war and of self defense. The negative side of this is: wilful destroyer, tamas-inertia, road rage (chaotic or cold), ignorance. Note his sensual facial features: fire in earth. Mangala carries his Shakti on his lap. His hands gesture “freedom from fear”. The Shakti is also the spear. The feminine Shakti is the Kundalini of which Mars when in his exaltation, is Lord.

Big muscular body, but also stillness. The alert spear is at rest: law-sustainer, the balance which is sattva-guna. The red energy is kept still and quiet.

Wednesday

Budha, Mercury. Intelligence is budha, a faculty which quicksilvers the mind, but is not the mind, it is the Universe. Sweet mischievous winged one, hears the speech of birds, blesses, delivers, playful chameleon, has lived as a woman – the son/seed of Chandra(moon) and Tara, goddess of the Word. Thus Budha’s Ardhanariswara curve, his sensitive androgenous grace.

Budha’s vehicle is a Lion with an elephant’s trunk – rather a surprise. The Lion is the king of beasts. The Elephant is the remover of obstacles, and very Indian. The Lion is the power of grace, and the Elephant – who grows SLOWLY – is the power of speech and memory.

Budha’s aura is gold. He is like Hermetic gold, clear, sparkling and childlike. The most adaptable and amenable of archetypes, he can take on also the colouring and power of the asuras – demons. He carries a short sword and a Tara Yantra shield.

Thursday

Guru: Jupiter: Brhaspati is the protector of the hymnology of the Vedas – teacher of the science of Light – controller of the Sun and Moon.

His western counterpart is Jove, or Zeus. Brahma is his tutelary deity. He holds rosary, mendicants’ staff, sacred water-pot, and his gesture disposes boons. Auspicious, except when reversing.

He has a yellow-white complexion, and sits on a golden lotus. His hair and beard are matted, and he wears an antelope skin. He is the preceptor of the Gods. Eight horses – or lotus petals, the directions of space – pull his chariot. The Great Swan is Paramahansa. In Vedic symbolism, the swan churns nectarine Light from the dark water – the cream from the milk.

Friday

Sukra: Venus. An androgynous figure. “Sukra” means “white”. The preceptor of the demons was Kavi – he brought destroyed asuras back to life. Bull Nandi found this out, and told his Master, Siva, who ordered Kavi before him, and gobbled him up. Inside Siva’s stomach, Kavi sang hymns in Siva’s praise. Pleased, Siva let him out through his penis, and told him (Kavi) he is his own Son, now called Sukra the white.

Like the Nilakunta/Kalakunta story, an atomic homeopathy comes into play: the transformation of the demonic at the root, by Siva

This tale of alchemic transmutation has strong resonances with the mythology of Uranus and Aphrodite. Uranus engendered so many Titans (cosmic demons), that he was castrated by Chronos (Saturn) by order of their mother, Gaia. His organ fell into the sea where it burst into a great froth, out of which emerged Aphrodite, goddess of love … comely as in Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, brought to shore. No wonder, many believe she’s the cause of all the trouble.

In the Solar system, Venus and Uranus both rotate around their axes at right angles to the rest of the planetary universe.

Sukra/Venus had agreed earlier to be the preceptor of Demons, because he had feelings of envy and ill will towards Bhraspati (Jupiter), the preceptor of Gods. The Vedic psychology is as precise and informed in its symbolism of dark and light, as any Jungian analysis. The demonic vitality, when regulated, becomes an auspicious servant.

Sukra/Venus enjoys white flowers, and to ride a red lotus; favours water, carries a water-pot, staff, rosary and boon-bestowing gesture, like Jupiter. The tutelary deity is Indra; the vehicle is pulled by the 8 white horses of the sea.

Saturday

Sani – Saturn – has a dark complexion, and carries lance, dart, spear and bow. Sanaischava was the second son – the firstborn was Manu, scribe of the Laws – of the shadow wife of Surya. Surya’s actual wife (Samjna) couldn’t bear Surya’s brilliant Light, so she left her shadow-replica for Surya to conceive with.

Sani keeps his head bent, for fear of causing injury to living beings. This is because once upon a time, being engaged in austerities, he failed to notice his lovely wife – who cursed him henceforth, that whatever he looked at, would be destroyed. So when the Gods persuaded him to visit Siva and Parvati and their new baby Ganapati (Ganesh), he kept his head bent, and wouldn’t look.

(Some say that he did look, and that is why Ganesh has an elephant head. In general the Vedic Divine behaviour has much in common with Olympus.)

But if Sani averted his gaze, he lost the ability to behold good fortune and the removal of obstacles, and grew gloomy. So he has a sadness, a darkness in his heart about the intolerable brightness of Surya; and a compassion with the living beings – the burden of their Dharma.

Sani’s tutelary deities are Prajapati, Lord of Creatures and their Procreation, and Yama the Lord of Death. His ornaments are a very dark sapphire – the colour nila. His ikon is black iron installed on a pedestal the shape of an arrow. Sani is slow moving, and tends to be lame. He has the face of the Sun, but rides a crow. He is a philosopher of the wheels within wheels which themselves are turning.

David Frawley’s book says Sani’s Vedic vehicle is an Ox. So I gave him a pair, yoked and slow moving. Sani has musicians’ hands. Saturn is the musical discipline, the harmony of the spheres, the subtle intelligence, or cosmic intellect.

Sunday/Monday

Rahu, the upturned glyph, is the Dragons’ Head with a serpent body. Rahu is a wide ranging break-dancer, with a passion for manifestation and reverse modes. He chases the Sun and Moon to eat them, but whenever this begins to occur, there is a strange resonance of alignment along the ecliptic planes: the Oneness, the silence in all the Universe … which Rahu dreads.

Paradoxically, Rahu’s dark path around the petals of the Light, cancels every difference.

Rahu most resembles Uranus. Vedic astrology, with galactic archetypes to deal with, as well as planets, dispenses with Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. As with Uranus, Rahu’s multi-dimensioned visit apparently breaks apart the known world, manifesting and destroying islands of aggrandizement … to reveal, as in Holst’s The Planets: Nothing. Ringing silence. Or Magic! Rahu’s energy field is a clash of cymbals.

His vehicle is a Lion and eight trotting horses, as black as beetles. He occludes and occultates the Sun: thus his power to promote illusion, magic and worldly gain, political tyranny and wealth … which break apart. He is pure Hollywood glitz. On a sundial, the principle of Time the all-devourer, faces the Sun: Rahu is the shadow the Sun throws behind Time. He carries sword, shield, spear, gesture of protection and gesture of boon disposal. He is worshipped by black flowers, and his face is tiger like. His tutelary deities are Kala – great Time – and Sarpa, the Serpent queen. Kala is another name for Yama, Lord of Death.

[NB: The KaLAs (accent on second A) are fractions of the Moon’s orbit. The Nitya Shaktis are 16 moon digits around the cycle of its waxing and waning.

KaLA is a manifestation (through the unfolding of Sri Chakra Yantra) of material force, along with sound (Nada). See also the similar root words: KaLA meaning root; KALI yuga, materiality, and KALAKUNTA, the great black demon churned up with the gods’ ambrosial butter, which Siva swallowed and turned peacock blue in his throat.

So KaLA suggests “materiality” and also “part or fraction” – which is what the materiality-projection turns out to be. KaLA is said (in Sri Chakra Yantra writings) to limit the infinite power of Siva who is formless. KaLA forms and separates.

KAla is the god of Time, carrying noose and cudgel. This also limits and materializes.]

In Rahu’s story, he was an Asura – a great Demon. He pretended to be a god, and came to drink Soma with them in their revels. Surya and Chandra (Sun and Moon) detected him, and reported him to Vishnu, who cut off his head with his Discus. But Rahu’s mouth had already tasted Soma and become immortal; so Brahma had to reluctantly make him into a planet. Rahu is hungry for ever, for the bliss. He pursues the sun and moon during the period of eclipse. Rahu, the North node, is a point of intersection of the orbits of moon around earth and earth around sun; this point travels counter-clockwise around the zodiac. It makes a complete circuit every 18.6 years.

Rahu rules the constellations Ardra, Svati and Satabhishak. His nature is feminine-absorbing, with Jupiter and Venus influences. He is exalted in Gemini, rules Virgo, is harmony in Libra, discord in Aries, detrimental in Pisces, and falls in Sagittarius – the story of his life. He “contributes to worldly prosperity”.

Tuesday

KETU – the Moon’s South Node – is the body chopped away from the Asura – from the serpent who tasted nectar, and remained for ever addicted.

Ketu favours spiritual development, Yoga and “the party is over”. Ketu is what got left behind Rahu’s binge, and is the situation of most of us. Rahu assists the general razzmatazz, but Ketu is much smaller than that giant head, and his tendency is to concentrate and distil, rather than to expand. Core-wise, he isn’t interested in externals.

Ketu is exalted in Sagittarius, rules Pisces, is harmony in Aries and discordant in Libra, causes grave detriment in Virgo and falls in Gemini. In some representations he is two-armed, with his left hand on his knee.

In the centre of the wheel is stillness. The tail end of the dragon seeks stillness. I feel blindfold with this KETU. I cannot see, he is a great mystery, and there isn’t much to read about him. He rides on Pigeons. His ikon is banner shaped. His tutelary deities are Brahma and Chitragupta. Chitragupta is an attendant of Yama. Thus: the Creator and the Destroyer are his guardian angels. He winnows out the excess. His head is deformed, and his complexion and ornaments are ashy. NAM YAR – who am i?

David Frawley’s book explains: RAHU is the shadow of the Moon; KETU is the shadow of the Sun. Ketu is contractive, centripetal, like Saturn. Ketu tends to use up one’s vitality – overwork and isolation, but … the most wonderful insight from past lives, aligned with Mercury. KETU means “a flag”. He boosts all the planetary powers. He is most like Pluto – trans-formative, the Light of the dark.

“Rahu and Ketu indicate the factors which block out the light of the great luminaries.”

In this general context, I am reminded of a classic photo of the world’s second highest mountain – taken on the Duke of Abruzzi’s expedition to the Karakorum in 1909: K2, known locally as “Ketu”, as seen from the Baltoro Glacier:

Here are now the second sequence of the Grahas, six months later – without notes, as published in David Frawley’s book, The Astrology of the Seers. It gave me an opportunity to develop all the ideas:

Sunday, Surya

Monday, Chandra

Tuesday, Mangala

Wednesday, Budha

Thursday, Guru

Friday, Sukra

Saturday, Sani

Rahu, Northnode

Ketu, Southnode

Dattatreya, the Guru of Life

Dattatreya, at the finale of this sequence, complements Ganesh at the beginning. Dattatreya is the Guru of those who no longer walk holding the hands of someone more grown up. Dattatreya is the unconditional preceptor through nature and through every situation in life: puja to the sacred art of Life.

Bridging principles of Kabbalah and Vedanta: Tree of Life, Four Worlds and Three Gunas

NB – for contemporary and wonderfully accessible teachings on Vedic Astrology (Jyotish), look up or google The Vedic Institute (David Frawley), British Association of Vedic Astrologers (BAVA – Andrew Foss), and Komila Sutton, who writes and lectures brilliantly. Andrew developed a Vedic-astrology software which is friendly to western tropical chart users.

TO VIEW SLIDES, click on any image and wait for gallery to upload

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.

Dancing with Pan (2)

Posted on November 15, 2012 by janeadamsart

This follows “Dancing with Pan (1)” – see recent posts.

Musicians 1987

Picasso made a deep and disturbing impression on me when I was small – which in later life would liberate my drawing.

“Pitraffic” – 1954

Shostakovich’s “Babi Yar” Symphony 1990

These are the four movements of Shostakovich’s 13th symphony – a sombre elegy on human evil, and the defiant vitality and humour of the spirit. Babi Yar commemorates a Nazi massacre of 100,000 souls near Kiev, in 1941.

Pan Dance Hokhmah 1990

This painting grew from the sketch above it, which followed Babi Yar. My intention was to paint a series inspired by the Sefiroth of the Tree: this one was how I saw Hokhmah, the 1st emanation – Wisdom. The dancing figure is pierced by the Light, and instantaneously gives birth. The embryo (breech delivery) is drawn the way my daughter drew childrens’ heads at the time. Behind the baby profile, like a shadow, is just visible, another profile – the way I drew my early heads. At the bottom right hand corner are “glow-worms” to light a path through the abyss, and back to the Upper Worlds.

I was studying the Letters and Names of God down the Tree – their creative currency – particularly the Tetragrammaton, sheathing the infinite potential of Aleph. The dancer looks both ways, at a right angle: the relation of life to Consciousness. Around the infinity sign, the paint floats like autumn leaves, a mandala. Birth, death and the Tree of Life are One.

Janus, 1954

These early drawings were very large. They filled each page of the drawing-books of cheap lining paper my mother bought in rolls, and cut and stitched together. In those days I drew for many hours at a stretch, every day. We lived on the Yorkshire moors.

The youthful Pan – 1990

Young Dryad 1957

From “The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen

“Strangely, that wonderful hot day of the ‘fifties rose up in Clarke’s imagination; the sense of dazzling all-pervading sunlight seemed to blot out the shadows and the lights of the laboratory, and he felt again the heated air beating in gusts about his face, saw the shimmer rising from the turf, and heard the myriad murmur of the summer.

“… he could only think of the lonely walk he had taken fifteen years ago; it was his last look at the fields and woods he had known since he was a child, and now it all stood out in brilliant light, as a picture before him. Above all, there came to his nostrils the scent of summer, the smell of flowers mingled, and the odour of the woods, of cool shaded places, deep in the green depths, drawn forth by the sun’s heat; and the scent of the good earth, lying as it were, with arms stretched forth, and smiling lips, overpowered all.

“His fancies made him wander, as he had wondered long ago, from the fields into the wood, tracking a little path between the shining undergrowth of beech trees; and the trickle of water dropping from limestone rock sounded as a clear melody in the dream.

“Thoughts began to go astray, and to mingle with other recollections; the beech alley was transformed to a path beneath ilex trees, and here and there a vine climbed from bough to bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple grapes, and the sparse grey-green leaves of an olive tree stood out against the dark shadows of the ilex.

“Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was conscious that the path from his father’s house had led him into an undiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of it all, when suddenly, in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite silence seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed, and for a moment of time he stood face to face there with a presence, that was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but all things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form.

“And in that moment the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and a voice seemed to cry, ‘Let us go hence’, and then the darkness of darkness beyond the stars, the darkness of everlasting.”

“Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchards, the fields of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things – yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky, to the solid ground beneath our feet – I say that all these things are but dreams and shadows: the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There IS a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision … I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil …

“…This world of ours is pretty well girdled now with the telegraph wires and cables; thought, with something less than the speed of thought, flashes from sunrise to sunset, from north to south, across the floods and the desert places. Suppose that an electrician of today were suddenly to perceive that he and his friends have merely been playing with pebbles and mistaking them for the foundations of the world; suppose that such a man saw uttermost space lie open before the current, and words of men flash forth to the sun and beyond the sun into the systems beyond, and the voices of articulate-speaking men echo in the waste void that bounds our thought …

“… it was a summer evening, and the valley looked much as it does now; I stood here and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable gulf that yawns profound between two worlds, the world of matter and the world of the spirit; I saw the great empty deep stretch dim before me, and in that instant a bridge of light leapt from the earth to the unknown shore, and the abyss was spanned.”

From The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

The Great God Pan is one of Machen’s most powerful works, and is in its entirety, a tale of beauty and of horror. Those whom the higher frequencies enter, who are not ripe enough or prepared, are blitzed by them, or suffer “awful, unspeakable elements enthroned as it were, and triumphant in human flesh.” Pan is not just a pretty face: it is according to what level of ignorance we project. Pan vibrates through Gaia, and the atoms between the stars. “Pan” means “Everything: pantheos“. Pan is paradox … beyond our fence, outside and yet within the fields we know. Pan is at the root of the seasons’ axis, the wild things of the elements … and Pan as the Mystery quickens, beckons and is beautiful.

The Archangel of planet Earth is Sandalphon; he is full of Pan. Dionysius is in Pan, and so is the grape. And so is the right amount of fear, in the path of awe.

Another very early drawing, when I was about four or five years old …

… and then a year or two later. As a child, I am Pan’s priestess. My dolls are Nature’s imagination, the flowers.

Copy from Rafaello: Archangel Rafael, the cosmic Intelligence, the healer of our intentions.

Another “dancing” sequence …

This is a root-of-spine awareness, to practice the piano

Dragon and Chick 1987

Serpent and Soul

Heracles cleans the Augean Stables – one of his 12 Labours. He diverted the rivers Alpheus and Peneus from their courses, to wash out the muck

Prehistory and Apples 1987

Suspicious child, with grownup behaviours

Midwinter dancing with Pan 1988

Midwinter dance with Pan 1988. The small phallus is as winter seed tucked away

Young king with pipe 1957

Midwinter dancing with Pan – New Year 1988. The dragon tail is history.

Thomas

Thomas in Provence – an illustration for a story by Catherine Harding, called “The Explorers of the Real World”.

A drawing from life – Steven Isserlis & Friends rehearse Messiaen at the Wigmore Hall (1988).

Pan is ambiguous. Pan leads as much into the dark as into the light: the potency from in between. Here are Pan-impressions from my dreams in “The Watershed”:

Dreams 244, April 1976: The Forest– “I dreamed last week of an orchard. I think it grew on the slope of a hill, at the fringe of the forest. The trees threw out beautiful branches, snakes of hostility towards me – in response. The forest came alive, like the one in Bartok’s The Wooden Prince. It was magic music, amazing me. The fruit on the branches and the branches themselves, awoke with serpentine purpose in response to delicate etheric vibrations of mine. The energy field of our interaction was a burst of silvery thorns in an aureole of colour.

“These trees and their limbs were hostile. They all were sorcery.”

Dreams 234, March 1976 – Episodes from “The Raincheck Dream” … “I am dreaming of this wood with my mother. The woods near the sea cliffs just north of Gordonstoun are the same as these ones behind Teanninich where she spent her school holidays. I have a strange new sensitivity. It is not now she who sings Dark Brown is the River, but the wood itself. The birds and the entire sound and life of these woods pulsate an extraordinary power like the waves of the sea. The space between the trees quickens in my veins a chord so high and deep, none of its colours are known to any orchestra. The illumination rocks and delights me, tremendous is the offering of its strange and secret pulse in stem, branch and song. Should I tell her? I decided not to. Don’t dissipate these things.

“When I got home, I began to watch The Exorcist on TV. I was scared, but I should see. The Chinese neighbours upstairs kept switching channels, so I missed parts of them and had to make them switch it back on. I sometimes shielded my eyes – this surprised me.

“There were massive, head-splitting explosions like cannon fire, or the trenches. The noise is its own horror in upstairs passages: the brain. This is the Devil’s sound, and I am one of his tunes. But I shall use this voltage for something the Devil never heard of! His speech is deeper than the forest, deeper than the deepest sea, but it has no note at all, it is NOT. I know it. Not the fools who believe in him, who run around in fear upstairs like me. The sound blew out my memory.

“… Many nights, my inner work took, during all this, to unfold. I held its evolution : it had a texture of quintessential equilibrium, like something shaped with hands. Hands from the outer life hold and cherish. Hands from within, touch or define an interplay of barometric pressures. It pleased me. It was delicate, yet strong and good.

“There was a feeling, in these sequences of dreams, of the Sun’s fire. It grows in a cauldron whose substance I cannot quite see. Time entered and gave it meaning. Time with it brought feelings and images of something male, unknown and triumphing, a power or vividness I recognised, something outside or new to myself, which I welcomed. The cockbird crowed. I touched with it, stone in a secret place. A mosaic of window panes fell away, and I lived now in light between the fragments of an archipelago, dancing on the sea. Upon the crests of the waves came wild plumed horses to blow upon my making.

Jyotish deity, 1998

“Yet too intense an occult concentration may mask fear and emotional poverty. I put it down, I left it, I went to have lunch.

“The thing in my absence maintained steerage. When I returned to the cellar of the seas, I purchased with it my vision. From the dawn a tribe of sea-lions drew chariots of fire, and the sun waxed until it filled the whole sky. I welcomed. And still it was held, this unknown thing, this flame, in the quiet equilibrium of my hands.

“Upon the potters wheel rises slow my city of Gathertegen, for my children to generate: the wrong rotation, the wrong touch – vanity – it crumbles.

“Again and again, between snow white sheets whose melt is the ocean, the seed was taken, and it grew. ‘Let God guide you.’ It widens and is shaped with hands, it is a fire which glows…(

(Guilt, grief and ships in the night, a co-dependent catastrophe, impossible to heal – “the lines of our rails lay now in the sea to which he would not come”) …

“The sun rose a pulse of drums from over the sea. And the cock crowed: ‘OSIBISA! Criss cross rhythms which explode with happiness, here in the heart of Africa … the Dawn …’

Welsh magick

Dreams 253, June 1976 – Primrose Light: “I think these trees are pear-trees, small ones whose wiry branches are grafted and trained to stretch each side horizontally. They grow in the garden at Manor Farm. They carry small white leaves, delicate like butterflies. They rustle as the wind sings. The branches with these bridal leaves may claw the sky like hands, like the fingers of my own hand.

“It was the tree of my hand, my hand a tree that made scratches in the air. A purity of inner space opened in the sky. Yellow light or brilliance poured forth golden like rain or radiant, releasing the voice and appearance of GOD.

“It happened for Mr V too. He shares with me the substance of joy, innocence, when he makes his branches into hooks and draws them over the sky. It wept, it bled, it shone. It transfigured all things. Let the veil of heaven be drawn back …”

Walk tall. Walk with the tree. It is our interior axis, the pole star: alignment.

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.

Truth is not a Monolog

Posted on November 11, 2012 by janeadamsart

me in the tree

Studying the Tree of Life is well and good, but the everyday test for each of us, is Life … the big apple. Navigating this year’s Grand Crossroads or tipping point through the yielding centre, each time the choice arises: do I shut my heart, or do I open? Do I add to the dreary flat-book name & blame game of all our operas, great novels and gutter press … or do I enter Aquarius?

Malkuth: A tree of life, children of the world

Do I obey inertia, or discover love?

If I succeed, it is because the butterfly wing reaches me and you … from those of us who discover and illumine an alternative, to the emotive name & blame game.

I have a personal situation here. It shapes itself in a delicate, rather unconventional way, like a fruit or a rose to hold, and even to smell. These days I try to practice visualising interiorly, the Rose Cross with all its living meanings … as a point of focus – a thought form with the Will-to-good. It is surprisingly hard. Yet our red Rose lives in a cube of space opening out into the golden Latin cross. This in itself is a marvel.

I turn to the oracle for picture language: to handle the unknown factors in my heart? With practice, this method delivers and helps us wherever, with what is in our boat, so I offer it here. My situation – my private life – demonstrates in essence the principle, because all our private situations feel similar, as YESOD. Relationship difficulties are our human-ness.

I did well, to take the lamp into my Self. I did well not to wave a torch at my problem like Old Knickers does in Tarot Key 15, because all thoughts about it are fantasy. The oracle’s picture language breaks through the screen. Please help me, Companions of the Light! – TO MOVE ON. Show me what You see.

Here is my method when life is on edge and I need help: With my left hand (subconscious), I cut the deck (facing downward) three times, put it back together, and repeat twice more. 9 cuts in all, or 3X3. Of the three piles, the centre is present, the left one is past, the right one is future.

dakini oracle 11.11.12: top three cards are past, present, future, with “j h v h” as a 4-fold spread of the centre (present moment) card and the three cards under it. The two apex cards are the sum of the four around them – overview or pyramid tip.

This is what turned out. They say: right now, Centre the Present – Sri Chakra – which is literally what I did: to reclaim my power. This is TIFARETH.

Past: A-Musement, as lovers etc: [smile]. Actually they find the whole thing hilarious. It may be desperate but it is not serious. Don’t resent it, let it play: a luxury scent if you will. Rub your nose in the Rose.

Future: Three fold Riddle. Veiled. Make no decisions, nor try to know what is happening there. Leave it alone behind its cloud, to clarify later. Those three veiled ladies of the middle east represent his tribal stuff. Don’t touch it, let the three veiled ladies pass on by. His courtesy when it returns, will know what to do.

For the Quality of this event in the present, I turn over the four cards under the centre one, and lay them out in sequence, in a Tetragrammaton cross: Yod father, Heh mother, Vav child and the second Heh – their result.

Tetragram rose cross

It is a passing show. Yod – Sri Chakra. Heh – Joker. Vav – Solar return – black night of the soul. Second Heh – Rose garden. The Overview, adding these cards up, is 139 = 13 (Death Transfiguration which is Movement) = 4 (Hot Seat, The Emperor, Aries.)

Ha ha! he’s an Aries. His own Guardians sometimes burn his bum.

Today’s oracle is a soul-nourishing koan. It is OK. I love the way it says, Don’t even try to peer through the veil; and the eclipsed sun as a way of retreat… (and look, we are in between moon and sun eclipse right now, building up to solar eclipse on the 13th) ; and what I work with here, which puts things in proportion.

Such a picture shows the shape of Providence in its astonishing beauty – that feeling as discussed in Kabbalah, of perceiving the pattern on the loom and its unknown quanta, all the threads: respect. It is one of those Long Thoughts in which I feel the Maggidim pulse. A Long Thought takes days and sometimes weeks, or even far longer in our time, to unfold. It is delectable – the A-Musement and … THE ROSES! My rose cross keeps practicing ! And look at the Joker – he is wearing a solar swastika jacket – a Cross!

The morning’s mood transmuted from fret, to cherish the Whole. The truth is, my dear Companions, that you put my worthy obstacle there, with the dark-light Tonglen breath on Hampstead Heath, that day nearly seven years ago, and I always learn from him: the grit, the pearl.

Return to Whom do I give power to? I. My Self. “Imagine” to dialogue with the Maggidim, to activate the wisdom. As Plato and Socrates taught, the truth is not a monologue.

The truth is a rolling log, a boat, a blog.

I just remembered and found this sketch in a 1993 journal

Visit (1992)

The rose
came into my room
accompanied by a cello
in a case, a music stand
and much elbowing and exertion.

Never did I see
so immense a rose
soft red and gold
in lotus light full blown
to scent, silent sweet.

She kissed my room –
a nut brown holy person,
Siva’s whirling arms in a seed,
Rafael’s Madonna with child –
and a nest of granite eggs.

Abundant oh rose
in excess of nature’s need!
your opening this moment
is wider than my room
and beyond my day.

“It’s the biggest one
in my garden,” said the ‘cello
bashfully, who brought you to my cave.
Petals fall. Your splendour
for ever in me stays.

from The Masters’ Eye, 1992-2009

I have some more pictures in a file, waiting to blog; so here is a gallery to complete this post:

Malkuth Virgo landscape, with Yesod, Hod, Netzach planets 2009 (Detail)

Menorah, Grail, the Tree of Sapphires 2003

REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY. 11.30 – my friend Paul rang up: I had once again forgotten to remember at 11am, because I was busy doing this, here. He told me about the Cenotaph. He told me about the letters the young lads write to their parents, on their way to Afghanistan, in case they do not come back.

As well as joining the protest for governments to end war, we must begin the contagion by cease-fire, here at home: to locate and cease the war within ourselves. Many thought forms – like the Tree of Life, and the Rose Cross – are ancient, and they assist this.

My father, as a young WW2 veteran in Burma, struggled all his life with war shock. Now at nearly 90 – another old goat – and because he really looked within, he has peace.

child siva serpent camel lion – a poster for a workshop, 1992

Rudra’s Progeny 2000

Near Stack Polly, Wester Ross 1951

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.

Whom do I give power to?

Posted on November 9, 2012 by janeadamsart

Subconscious & the Worldview 1987

Provide-ence is an ongoing tapestry through which we wake and go to sleep, as the thread goes in and out. When I die, I sleep to wake again. Each life is a training ground, or school, TO WALK the map. Each time I am born I find myself with the familiar set of fascinators (problems) but differently expressed; and the means to progress them. Next spring, the same leaf opens, to a different angle on the tree. The lilies of the field and the squirrels are provided for, and so is each nut to the ground; the galactic and subatomic detail and the DNA beyond our grasp.

How do I find the Providence rather than an Accident? – by opening and slowing down my perception, at any moment. Slow down my thought. Accept tough love also.

sleeping parents 1 – 1987

The fragile flat coastlines to our dark hidden continents, interact, and tend to ignore providential warnings from the sea. “Many times through the aeons and small millenia, the trees go back and forth; humans adapt; life and death breathe in and out; systems exhaust their time and are replaced. Observe the tipping point, and keep practicing,” said my Kabbalist Elder last night. Very few humans make conscious choices. How do we recognise them, from the mass heritage of floating pressures to bear? What is Accident and what is Providence?

Sleeping parents 2 – 1987

Accident is a rush of waves against each other, an untidy conglomerate of tempi. In the dimensional spectrum, subjective states awake or sleep. When you shift levels, the blind intercourse of billiard balls completely changes its nature. The message of the Upanishads is: “it is only the body that dies.” Ah, the poor wordy scholars! Accident is revealed as Providence when time within it slows and stops, like it does before a sudden death; and the level opens wherein you see with it, the screenplay of your whole life. The pattern, the tapestry appears.

The sudden death is but the lifting up of a veil I thought was life and history.

My Elder has a strength and breadth of outlook, which helps to lift mine above the local fusspot plane.

Sleeping parents 3 – 1987

Thanks to WordPress, I expand and alter the map whenever I wish. Here’s what today’s post originally began with, as intended:

Mr C and Mr O …

My defining symbol and hope, emerging through recent events – that the tea party guys and the re-elected President agree to trade moneybags and get real in the coming fiscal emergency, because actually they need each other now – and not to bite the hand instead of the cakes.

… begin to spell C and O … co-operate, or else.

Firemans lift (Copied from “multiracial team” in http://www.photosearch)

However …

I discovered through a providential intra-blog-link prompt, an http://phaelosopher.com, who writes wise words: Thought for Food. This was last night. He reminds me – don’t give away the power to the whole fantasy – ELECT MY SELF.

Whom have I the power to elect, at any moment, any meditation, any movement or thought, wherever I am? My Self – the Godcosm. This unlimited room of my being is private, unimpeachable, all powerful and eternal. It is rather like Douglas Harding’s way of being built open. Elect my Self. There is no other way to begin.

Sleeping parents 4 – 1987

When I think of all those stars and stripes across the pond, whose job is to demonstrate how not to be, with their impassioned presidential cutouts, and the political hell of it all … and my emotions getting caught up in it, wanting to understand … My own thesis (or this-is) now reflects: the true empowerment is Here inside – not the outreach glamour and worry, nor any society, personality or governmental type.

And not my cher ami in Golders Green either, who just this moment, while I was sitting here wondering what to write next, poked his phone, and chucked me out of his heart. He hasn’t done this for well over a year. I know his problem’s pattern of old, how it builds up and suddenly breaks out; and to NOT TAKE DELIVERY – but my hands shake, my mouth goes dry, and adrenalin spikes. Why? It is a deep trauma embedded long before his day. I feel punched in the gut, furious, deeply hurt and shocked – ALL OVER AGAIN. I am also in an utter frazzle how to compose a cool bog-off return text, to rebuff his flak. I also feel free, which is fragile. Go for a blowout in the hills, and don’t think. Poor bloke is starting his second Saturn return. Wash him outa my hair.

Sleeping parents 5 – 1987

Whom do I give my power to? How difficult it is to “keep practicing”! – the visceral black cloud whirls up a storm to break my house.

Frightened child awakes – 1987

When it is that difficult to have a relationship with a man I love dearly, and sometimes don’t like – thank God we don’t live together – why should I expect and require the other stars and stripes of the world to get along? The human condition starts here at home at my kitchen table in a mess, and nowhere else … and another ancient feeling in my solar plexus seems to uplift through it, seeking some altitude, solace, a view, and even a smile.

Roll with it! Tao with it! Grieve and tear, and yet rejoice in what the Providence provides, the whole of which I cannot see, but sense, and know to be true – the wild fling of life out flung, chucked out from his heart – so what? It was hemming me in a bit!

Each time the heart is broken, it actually expands … if you let it.

Pain into the open, goatish Pan – 1987

And do you know? An hour or two went by, and I didn’t walk out, I put in the writing at the beginning, about Providence, from this morning’s journal; and found in a ready file, a scanned sequence of Sleeping Parents which interweaves my stories of election and lovers’ tiff so providentially … and I am now HAPPY. To be honest, I am not pleased with him this week, either. Some time off, suits me fine – school’s out. Aligning to the event, the hurt, and letting the creation flow, slows down and turns it around like a fruit. Pain is a potential blessing; honour the situation. We are pissed off with each other – so it balances! I won’t give power to theories and replays, worrying about him – I know him. He has multiples of nine lives.

Drawing with eyes-i closed – 1987

It is a beautiful autumn day, a long dark cloud-bank cruises along the rooftops of sunlit houses and the air is pale oyster shell. There is the joy of being. It seems when I said No to the useless argument, my inner peace awoke. The tempo of my being curved towards encircling. We live in interesting times, and Mercury is retrograde. I feel the winds of change.

BLOG NEWS – I shall shortly be putting in my “About”, the links to my two new blogs.

Aquariel (http://janeaquariel.wordpress.com ) is a companion to this one. It has one post in it so far, and I shall probably add to it once a fortnight.

The Reckless Fruit (http://therecklessfruit.wordpress.com) is something quite different. It is still in preparation. It is a book – my 150 “Taunton Black” charcoal drawings, with sketches, doodles and poetry, done at school during the 1960s, and contains my best work. It is a documentary in two parts. It is being published as a thing complete, when ready. I finished revising and uploading Part Two, and I go on to complete Part One, “up” the timeline, so it can be read in sequence “down” the scroll, when finished.

The Reckless Fruit has ten chapters so far. They are posts, still listed at the bottom at present, but I shall move them to the side bar, to access.

There were a few teething problems in both blogs, so I’d be grateful if anyone giving it a try would comment if pictures are not appearing where they should, etc.

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.

Sacred India Tarot Archive – Creation of the Buddha Suit of Pentacles

Posted on November 5, 2012 by janeadamsart

Continuing our Sacred India Tarot Archive series, now through the Minor Arcana – Creation of the Suit of Pentacles/Disks:

Buddha and Nasturtium Salad (these peppery leaves & flowers are good to eat!)

Jane’s Notes

Gautama Buddha, born under Taurus, sustained throughout his life and enlightenment, the strong sensuous contact with Earth. He experimented with the traditional spiritual path of physical starvation, but found it as unwise as the dry “heady” practices to which Hindu spirituality had succombed. He taught the Great Middle Way; but also to enjoy, by example, the fruits of life: mens sane in corpore sano. The key to alleviate suffering – about which he felt passionately – is balance and moderation. This he firmly held. Compassion is impossible, when driven by partisan beliefs and malnourishment. Compassion is equal with Mother Earth, who births and feeds us.

SITA CARD ONE, Ace of Disks – the Birth of Buddha)

Rohit’s Notes to Jane – March 2003:

I am using the Buddha story, because I realized it is primarily an earth myth. He is born feet first, and as his mother births him in a standing position, his feet touch the ground first, and he instantly walks three steps. All identifying with earth. He calls on the earth to testify in his favour when Mara accuses him. He dies lying on the earth like a lion.

The pictorial references given should in most cases prove adequate to compose the drawings for each card. We need not range too far from the norm here, as the story of Buddha as explained in the accompanying article (see “Rohit Arya’s Essay on the Buddha”, posted earlier) is now part of the mind frame of all Asia. This used to include countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, which were Buddhist for almost a millennium before converting to Islam. Before beginning the cards, please read the article.

One of the compositional issues we are likely to face is, how do we fit in the appropriate number of pentacles or coins, as the choice may be into each card. I give a picture of coins actually depicting the Buddha, so that we have an idea as to the India style of coins, if we choose that option. The sort of edge to the coins gives an authentic touch. Perhaps we can compromise – have a coin ‘feel’ with pentacles inscribed within their boundaries.

The sketches of buildings are solely for the purpose of filling in background. If need be, they can be used in all the suits.

Even though I started my article by saying that the Buddha was not a prince, that is how mythology remembers him, and that is how we will therefore depict him.

Ace – Birth of Buddha

The choice was to go with the famous white elephant dream his mother had, or the actual depiction of the birth itself, which I felt was better, as it immediately establishes the link with the earth energies.

So we will use the actual birth of the Buddha. He was born feet first, and as soon as he touched the ground he walked, a phenomenon of great and complex doctrinal significance. The illustrations given should prove adequate for the composition, but we might include a little walking baby, suitably halo’d. In the illustrations the Buddha is shown emerging from his mother’s side, a somewhat improbable event! The mother is holding on to the branches of the tree to help herself deliver, it being common enough in India for women to give birth standing, as almost all other mammals do.

There is no need to veer away from the traditional depictions of costumes of either men or women. The bare breasted women picture is for reference only, and comes from Sri Lankan murals, though they show the unmistakable Ajanta influence.

This pictorial reference from Rohit – the only one I can find now – has a more Greek style.

Jane’s Notes

Traditionally, the Buddha’s mother gave birth bearing down as she held the branches of a tree; surrounded by helping women. To the bodhi tree he returned, for the Great Enlightenment; and as the tree lay on its side to die, he attained Nirvana. My first draft for the Ace of Pentacles card contained a female figure to each side, but these were later removed.

I do not have our correspondence about this card. Probably it didn’t get printed out. Here is the completed work:

The question of how to depict the coins, was resolved with this first card: the traditional Buddhist symbol is the Great Wheel of the Law. We agreed to use this – (with twelve outer spokes and eight inner ones) – for the Pentacles or “Disks”, by which the teaching reaches the ground, and … walks!

In some scriptures, Buddha is called “the wheel rolling King”.

Wheel rolling King – 1988. The orbital eye in the wheel is a cosmic atom

The Buddha nature vastly transcends any personal or individual focus. It is of the order of those great wheels, the galaxies; the time it takes for a feather’s touch on the Himalayas once every billion years, to reduce the entire range to dust. The Tathagatha is the in and out breath of Kalpas: the aeons of innumerable universes and lifetimes of the Buddha. And yet, when this great being walked our paths, he was tender, shrewd and intensely practical. Nature on earth is in this way, exquisitely practical: to the smallest detail – the tides, the cycles and the seasons; the way our body is made.

But we have to learn to become practical likewise. When we live arrogantly and out to lunch in our heads, and have no conscience with our toxic litter, Nature is our faithful mirror.

From the Buddha’s teaching …

“THE TOWER is as wide and spacious as the sky itself.

“The ground is paved with (innumerable) precious stones of all kinds, and there are within the Tower (innumerable) palaces, porches, windows, staircases, railings and passages, all of which are made of the seven kinds of precious gems …

“And within this Tower, spacious and exquisitely ornamented, there are also hundreds of thousands … (innumerable) of Towers, each one of which is as exquisitely ornamented as the Tower itself, and as spacious as the sky.

“And all these Towers, beyond calculation in number, stand not at all in one another’s way; each preserves its individual existence in perfect harmony with all the rest; there is nothing here which bars one Tower from being fused with all the others, individually and collectively; there is a state of perfect intermingling, and yet of perfect orderliness.

“Sudhana, the young pilgrim, sees himself in all the Towers, as well as in each single Tower, where all is contained in One and each contains all.

Paraphrase by Suzuki from the Buddha’s AVAMTAMSAKA SUTRA

The child was born from his mother (who died soon after) and walked at once.

How many others have dreamed about this, perhaps during pregnancy? I did, many times when I was expecting, and I would like to hear if others did. Briefly, in those dreams, the baby was born awake, and to my astonishment, spoke to me, and walked sturdily. I might tell this story in my next post.

In my view, such a child is the delivery of a creative consciousness, and may happen at any time. Such a child is a way of thought, foretelling a way of seeing. The gods and devas and Great Messengers download through our psyche – (the atmosphere around the planet) – sometimes as infants fully formed, with their term of growth and realisation. And they walk!

The more ancient the wise ones are, the younger they apear. In every newborn’s face flow and flicker the centuries of our Self: and thus the maternal bond.

A movie was made of the Buddha’s life, starring Keanu Reeves. The footsteps of the walking newborn sprout lotus flowers, deliciously. This babe accelerates the inner nature, rather like photo-technology learns to, on the surface. The Christian tradition of the Virgin birth contains the same mystery, striking any moment, in the most ordinary manner. Fruit of the womb! Only a fragment of the divine ordination – the Buddha land wherein we live: the galactic Christ consciousness – gets captured into “what we think”; and then is dogmatized.

The Law

Rohit Arya

Earlier posts about the deck, including the Major Arcana archive are in http://aryayogi.wordpress.com The deck is copyrighted (c) 2011 to the publishers, Yogi Impressions Books pvt, and available also on Amazon and internationally.

Jane

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.

Sandy

Posted on November 2, 2012 by janeadamsart

Under the Tempest lives Prospero.

When my heart is particularly touched to draw, I sometimes turn the photo upside down, and draw it upside down, then turn it round and finish it. Seems a different region of my brain comes into play, and my drawings done this way, are more honest: the proportions are better. When I went up to Waitrose yesterday, and saw this photo in the paper, I cried. It said everything. I cannot say why.

Here in England, we are a fraction the size of the United States, and the things which happen to us are correspondingly on a smaller scale. Sandy was a thousand miles across, leaving scenes resembling the tsunami in Japan: our Great Storm during the night of 16/17 October ’87 was perhaps 50 to a hundred miles wide, at its full strength.

I was drawing before, during and after it. So I attach below, my picture gallery of this sequence, in solidarity.

There can be nothing more terrifying than Natures apparent malignancy, unleashed against our lives, homes and loved ones – perhaps even more than man’s inhumanity to man. For Nature is the only reliable home we have.

Symbols abound – political, ecological and of history, during our era of the tipping point; and not one person’s private thread is unaffected.

Here is not my time or place to opinionate or discuss these symbols; except one. As we cross from one temporal Great Circle of the “Mayan-calender” into another, (as if through an hourglass) it is curious that the East coast hurricane got re-christened “Sandy” even before the waves arrived. The waves threw great drifts of sand over the streets of New Jersey. The only thing wise to say with any certainty, is that Sandy is a wake up call, wake up from the national dream: it changes the patterns and fates, and moves them differently through each other. There are breaches; unexpected reconciliations occur also, in a concerted effort to mend and rebuild the human landscape.

During our English October storm in ’87, I was viscerally aware of an “alchemical process” stirring under the blast. To discover the meaning, if any, we need to look below the turbulence. Under the tempest lives Prospero.

Prospero is not only the guardian of spiritual wealth and heritage, but also the human factor awakened in cataclysm, to draw together, face harsh truths, assist and console one another. Prospero tames and teaches Caliban.

My drawings in ’87 were aware of the approaching storm, before I was. I was emotionally asleep, along with the infamous weather forecast; the sketches from my subconscious, were awake.

Before the Tempest

Before the storm ’87

anxiety ’87

Welcome across? ’87

the day before … ’87

After the Storm

… and the day after. ’87

Monster nightmare, or Wake Up ’87

The Wounded Isis Tree ’87

King Lear – “Blow winds and crack your cheeks!” ’87

Gust ’87

Carnage ’87

… and praise Those that Stood ’87

Destinies and fates thrown across each other ’87

Prospero

Shelter ’87

Ancient voices and wisdom begin to emerge: Prospero ’87

Forage ’87

Storm’s inner alchemy: a crucible of peace ’87

The living trees and civilizations around Earth’s crust share a common root, the crucible of the core.

Dragon & Mother Isis ’87

Mary Gaia with baby, 1956

Whatever the outcome:

No one who leads a land, is superman. He or she contends with too many conflicting self interests in government, and strives to keep a firm middle road.

If he is lucky, he keeps his integrity and his honesty, and is not afraid to declare his limitations openly. No change happens overnight. Nor is change brought about by just one four-year term of “Yes We Can.” “Yes we can” needs to complete the process, through all the “no we won’t” resistances to it. That takes courage.

The winds of change we witnessed this week, are a stern picture; the storm accelerates our vision. Hurricane Sandy on earth is a tangible warning, as is perceived all round the planet, from the higher plane. Besides destruction and tragedy, it blows out the cobwebs, and a much further horizon may clarify. Each Tempest, in a single soul, as in a nation, contains a seer, or transforming power.

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 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) – along with many other creations in house.

I write, illustrate, design and print my books. Watch this space.