Inner Journey, finding Botticelli

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Mercury, after Botticelli, 2009

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This journal entry has been “pending” as a post, for half a year!  It is as relevant now to my discoveries, as then.  It inspired me later, to blog some of my Watershed Tales – including The Lens.

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Link to Aquariel: When Reflecting on the Lovers

21 October 2012 – now we are in Scorpios …  I recollected this morning, that my daily Invocation combines Dion Fortune’s “master contact” gesture, with Halevi’s Tree:  “Let us gather together, draw together.”

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Three Hand Mudras or Gestures on Glastonbury Tor/Avalon – the Shepherd, Those who Sailed West to East, and theBuilders.

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Saluting the Tree, I stretched, and when you stretch you hold up all your weight with ease.  And stretching is the capacity of the inner and the occult life, because stretching grows.  I am moved too.  Everything in nature stretches – plant growth and penile arousal.  To stretch upholds itself, and widens, and the key to “stretch” is desire.

Feeling physically heavy is perhaps due to the lightening of the body weight during moments of inspiration and lift-off.  One of Dion Fortune’s teachers lost two-thirds of his body weight while meditating – she could pick him up with ease.

The resumption of materiality is felt more, after an illumined inner journey or creative process.  That must be why some trance mediums – particularly those in the dark circle – get burly and coarse.  They pile on weight to offset the astral networking.

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Tree of Life in Queen Scale colours (Sketch). These are the Beriatic colours for the Sefiroth – their vibration in the World of Creation:  Kether white, Hokhmah grey/silver, Binah black or indigo, Hesed blue, Gevurah red, Tifareth yellow/gold, Netzach green, Yesod violet, and Malkuth  combines citrine, olive, russet, slate.

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Dion Fortune “in-vented” the Fountain Breath.  It was designed to assist the early twentieth century problem of purity – how to pass up through the sexual-energy reservoir without flooding the engine, and do good work with it.  Her generation’s natural sex drive was expressed in society, in stifled, cramped and addictive ways.  Due in part, to the work of this great teacher and others on the astral plane between the Wars, there is a small amount of liberation in our sexual mores.  We are able to be more honest with each other in our relationships:  gender timelines are not rigid:  parents share the active care of their young.  Of course, media attitudes and the Karmic heritage of centuries of subconscious abuse have not kept pace with this.

We have to look within our situation and take a great interest in it, to see what is true, and to manifest our Life force in an evolutionary way.

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Fountain tree of Life –  Queen Scale colours, but the Sefiroth are turned around.  Normally we view the Tree facing the same direction with Adam Qadmon’s back to us, with the same left and right sides as ours.  Here the aspirant and the Tree are turned to face each other objectively.   They embrace.  As if in a mirror, the Tree’s Yang right pillar – Hokhmah Hesed Netzach –  is reflected in the aspirant’s Yin left side – Binah Gevurah Hod.   Some Kabbalists and occultists do practical work in this manner.

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About ten years ago, I learned a fountain breath method, up through the “Tower of Alchemy”, the tree and the body of light.  So the tower is in my inner eye, right now,  by ventilation – it “vents” the Kundalini shakti, in a way which blesses the surrounding landscape with Her Light.  The tower is phallic, pumping up the dragon seed.

The Tree of Life/Tower of Alchemy as a flowering Staff (2002), showing the Malkuth cavern with almond flower, Yesod with almond nut, Tifareth as the Rose Cross and Daat as pineal sight – the pine cone at the other end of a Yesod “almond” staff.  Yesod is the personal consciousness;  Daat the transpersonal link, or Union.   Through the interlocked Four World-trees on Jacobs Ladder, Yesod and Daat overlap.   See other posts on Jacobs Ladder and Kabbalah.  NB – This painting and the inner journey with it, was inspired by David Goddard’s book THE TOWER OF ALCHEMY.

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In the root cavern underground – Malkuth – is an almond flower.   Beneath the almond flower carved in rock, is a rough ashlar cube:  the altar of our life.  Through it pulses a fiery fountain, dark and light –  a circuit of perpetual cycles:  J H V H.   In the curved rock walls, are doors – entrances:   the Tarot Keys for the Judgement, the World and the Moon converge here.   There is also a portal to the planetary Kundalini where we are not supposed to go.  It seems to descend a stair, as in my dream of The Witch. (House of Hundreds of Rooms).  I went a little way down that stair, and heard the builders’ tools deep down within the basement or outside the House of all Souls.

GALLERY 1

These three Tarot Keys represent the three paths of the Tree which converge to Malkuth, the Earth.

The paths from Malkuth – SHIN, TAV, QOF.  In Malkuth are shown the four elements.

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At the door by which I entered – down the spine, ida pingala spiral stair – is an earthen jar in which is distilled and grows the Wine of Life.   The Wine of Merit is life.  It is also a signature of vitality.  So attention to it may help mine.

With regard to journeying – my third eye focuses, like a little button put here.   Third eye and the fountain breath are what is needed to travel accurately, and go places.

So I’m walking along the centre opening passage, it is of rock, a round curved tunnel, but illumined.  My plan from Malkuth is to visit Yesod, where the tunnel opens to a circular  “room”.   On the Beriatic Queen Scale, Yesod is coloured violet, a wonderful crystal living flower.   But first I am in the central tap root rising to Yesod;  it is the World dancer’s path coloured indigo :  TAV the Sign, GVPh the body as our living temple – and Gravity:  a rich indigo upwelling darkness.

Key 21, ruling this path, is called “the Administrative Intelligence“.   It contains and regulates the subliminal knowledge of our cellular and Karmic organization, and of the  Tree of Life as a whole.   Kether is planted deep in the ground!

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GALLERY 2

Note a triad pattern –  three figures in the cards to each side of The World.  They form the letters L.V.X. – Light.

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Perhaps when I overheat and the dark is red like brick, it may help to inwardly transform it to blue-violet indigo, to cool down and soften.   At once I feel the breeze, like the sea.

Do I meet anyone along here?   Some peoples’ meditations teem with inner plane beings and elementals, which I don’t “see”.   Perhaps I feel their companionship in the space.   I imagine the hoards of workers in the Ministry of Magic entrance hall under the streets, as in the Harry Potter books.

There is a press of workers and of city dwellers in the Passage of Administration, to and fro.   I don’t see them, because that is not the trick or birth/Ascendant type of my mind.   But I perceive that this path is a vast station of departures and arrivals – rather like Lime Street where I sat with the Yellow Man.   He was a classic appearance of the inner Teacher or guardian angel.  In that brief encounter in my dream, he nourished and informed my entire life … thank you !   “Ireland was his home.”   His impact would lead to leprechauns and Dancers of Pan in my language … see how I am led around to the World Dancer again – for she is truly a dancer of Pan.   The trail again is warmed, even heated, as kundalini rises through my ebbed physical strength.  Turn Her from redbrown to deep velvet indigo cool.  Contain her in the Night of cold waters, silver Isis reflecting stars.

The heat passed, as I realise I have a trained and focused mind in fact;  for I do not wander off into irrelevant spooks and glamours.   The abstract living essences are what I love and dwell among.  Always they return me to the visual Rhyme:  the  play of the Archetypes.  Watch and feel; relax;  be greeted.   Greetings, my Holy ones.   They dance slowly round the Muse like Botticelli’s angels.   Primavera.   I stop here this morning, with Her.

Botticelli’s Primavera – Detail

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She, so much gazed upon by millions of art lovers down the centuries since he painted her, is fully fledged, a living Goddess:  the Archetypal Mother of All.   Botticelli.

Who am I? his apprentice or himself?   Now I see the ironic expression of his self portrait in one of his works.   It does not matter.

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I take his hand and we walk into Yesod, the Foundation of the Tree.

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spring violet – photo credit http://www.ofwoodsandwords.com

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The violet crystal flowers, all around.   We are inside a little spring violet, and in it there is a stone font with a fountain almond mist:  a shining in the air.   Now Yesod is where I meet my mental-plane Lover, and here I am with Botticelli.  Here we are by the dark maternal enigma of giant Isis.  So do what is natural.   Get into the font, and twine my arms and legs around him Yab Yum and start to breathe together the Y H V H around.   We fuse the painterly craft, the renaissance genius, the beauty and purity of the Line.   Be still and know I am God.   Botticelli got scooped by Savonarola, but I won’t.   Ever.

Sandro Botticelli, I am free from persecution, so now I am your Primavera and your Aphrodite.   You are ebony lingum in my curvy clouds.   A small fiery triangle glows with orange light and flame.   We are an Indigo oval stone with scarlet triangle :  Akasha tejas, the inner Key to Gold:  refinement of the Saturn and Mars centres, and their blend.   Isn’t it remarkable how we changed roles,  the gender free exchange, when conducted in Beriah.

Akasha Tejas tattva

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The essence of the akasha tejas nuptial is the pure white brilliance.

Be still, be still and know I am God.   Kether is the deep of things.   Kether is everywhere and all pervading, even the enormous floating masses of forgetting.   I don’t “see” my lover:  I find the sparkling point, the inward lead.

It is a subconscious induction or programming.  The inward spark is fresh as a field of hay.   It finds and pleasures every crevice.   Delta of Venus!    Now I am this bud. The green-red drawing is part of a series I drew in 1988, just before I began to study Kabbalah – the story of a Fool and the Lamb he liberated.  The Tree spirit in the cell has “black” tributaries like roots or branches and little space pads between them, like foetal fingers.  Encircling it concentrically under the epidermis are the notes – F,D,C,A,F – of the Fool’s Chord which he played on his flute.   In it is a diamond, the drop of dew on the Rose.

Tree spirit

It is the bliss before bothering about sexual arousal.   Before sexual arousal – for I  picture the ebony linga teasing and fondling the dew – there is a moment 99.9% ignored, of peace and plenty, stillness and the unknown.   Perhaps this is what Ida Craddock was teaching.   The ruach is unhurried, deep, gentle and cool.

I suffer from insomina, even when my mind is quiet.  To go to sleep at night means:  to the right department.   Sleep in the body is given when I am free to lay her aside and travel to the right place in the subtle Kingdom of the world.

Somewhere along the line, this facility got tangled up.   It works fine when I am writing in the morning, but not when I need to sleep at night.   Sleep isn’t only for rest.  Sleep for someone like me, is a medium within which to do good work.   Not “good works”! – good interior work.  In ancient Egypt, the deep sleep of initiates releases their Ba or Ka or Light-body.

Impression that when I am properly asleep and not hooked up to anything, my “Egyptian” consciousness awakes and can travel to wherever some assistance is needed – perhaps to cross the river.   I have rather a clear picture now of the Egyptian, and how she works with Thoth and Horus.  It is a feeling, rather than a picture.  The Egyptian or Atlantean consciousness resides in Beriah.   She pervades everything and all the centuries on Earth creatively, a perfume.

Black hair, brown skin, white something.   I am sure she is the sunburnt black haired Older Sister princess who comes to sit among the flowers and skipping children in my Cornish garden, age six.  Her long head and buck teeth.   My new teeth of course, were growing.

Queens with jewels in a garden – 1956

Children and elder sister in Cornish alps, 1956

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An unconditional happiness plays near the Cornish Pyramids of white china clay in the 1950s.

In those Egypt days, our gardens were written in formal hieroglyphs, for the student to en-picture and cultivate and make his or her own.  Jonquils, jewels, wildflowers:  the letters for speech and learning to read.

I have a taste of that wonderful elder society now, its salt sand perfume, and its cool clear vision, long before it got muddied by the priests of power.

In subsequent lifetimes, I became one of these muddy priests also:  for everything we en-picture with the trained psyche, we some day embody.  It is Nature’s requirement to be fully expressed.

Practicing a Mantra – 1987

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The trained psyche comes into flower and operation only at a certain level of the focus.   That is her field of protection.  She is sealed from the clutter and persuasions that float around and bombard the everyday life.   I have an agreement with her:  the faculty only works when consciously in the World of Beriah with her.

I seem to have slept enough last night, to liberate this depth.

Copy – Botticelli Madonna & two brats – circa 2007

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GALLERY 3

Here is a sketch of Elisabeth Tomalin – I just thought of her….  and of her grandson Tom Hetherwick.  I found and cut out that photo of him in the paper.  I was struck by an essence of his Granny – her lineage – I see her eyes through his, and smile.   She was by nature a guardian and Guide of Souls.  She was the only person in the world who knew and kept the secret of the Olympic Cauldron – Tom’s Torch of Time.  He shared it with her, while she waited in her bed to die, last spring.  She was 99.   It was an intense frustration to her when she couldn’t dream, and remained locked in life’s tiny, distressed and despised body.  I am sure she is now at large, bigtime.   While tidying up my emails I found the eulogies they read at her funeral.  All of them agree with love, what a hard trial their Grandmother was.

Meanwhile the diamond grew bright, like rose quartz.  It is linked to the Rose in the dark, in the inner rose cross sanctuary.

Savitri 1990

Links join parallel universi through wormholes, just as they do online, and even within one blog .  The link is the mode of the interior Consciousness.  This is what is meant by Hebrew letter VAV, the nail or hook.  It pins time to timeless, thought to transfiguration, his to herstory, things and different periods together.  Spheres roam, enter each other and form vesicas in which life is born and broods and dreams.

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I picture the inter-dependent souls and fishes, in my walk in the dark.

So !

Resume our place in the font of Isis, Botticelli and I, and greet farewell.  Go well, till we meet again. Be loved.

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GALLERY 4

Aphrodite’s tresses – an early drawing, circa 1956

I drew this, by turning the photo of his self portrait upside down, and drawing it thus. Then turned it right way up to finish it. The drawing is more honest this way. I get glimpses of a Renaissance Florentine youth.

This is done in the normal way, with great difficulty. Yet it feels like drawing myself. An artist’s intuitive ideal is often based on his or her own features and hands.

Venus after Botticelli 1956

Many attempts yesterday, to draw her. Sometimes I see an Italian girl of that period – who came and sat for him.

Then I went to an astrology class, so this was done from memory while there …

… and so was this. She has rather a modern look about her, but I quite like it as a drawing. Perhaps the secret of Botticelli’s Primavera is his beautiful distortion. Her right eye in his painting, is much lower than her left than anatomically possible. It gives that mystery to her expression.

Another early one – the Centaur with Athene and my childhood hero – Perseus

… and Perseus flying, on Hermes’ winged sandals, near the 3 Grey Sisters. They had but one eye between them, and passed if from hand to hand.

I started this morning, with this one. Nowhere near her yet!

More early angels, dancing around the nativity, I think.

I wonder if B tried again and again to realise his goddess, or was it just one flowing miracle from his hand and eye?

Perseus slays the Gorgon whose eyes turned men to stone

Getting nearer, at last! As I did at the beginning with Botticelli’s self portrait, I turned her picture upside down. It’s the only way to really see, and try to draw consciously.

Enough for now. Actually it isn’t necessary to try to make her look like Primavera – only to use the model as a starting point, and see what happens.

This is more like Botticelli’s later style, perhaps.

And this again, from the earlier time, when I drew without conditioning or fear.

I wonder, his wonderful line, did he draw it just like that, or did it refine through painter’s trial and error and rubbing out, like mine? In not one of these sketches did I dare to place the Primavera’s right eye where he did. It makes all the difference and depth to her expression.

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Keeping the whole pattern clear for next time, withdraw back to Malkuth, the almond flower in the cave’s ceiling and … how did I enter that?  Ah – it was the talk of Dion Fortune and the Fountain breath, and how it irrigates the surrounding countryside.

The dragon rises and falls peacefully, after all my practice back in 2002.  The dragon has a core of fiery whiteness, little puffs of the Brilliance.   The universe is composed of Brilliance;  why else do the stars shine?

I can visit where I like in the Tower, in a trice.   Strange how seldom I come here!

This morning/during the night, I started to form a talisman:  Calm, Confidence, Competence.  Say those words as often as I can.   A picture came with them – a big dew drop, with a tiny one the other way round, inside.  It is like the Soul Tetrahedrons.   But now I understand what it really means – it is the akasha in the tejas, scarletindigo, the Aries in Capricorn.   A little oval Stone of the Wise, in various expressions of density, is realised.

So keep a hold of it at base.  When cradling a lover’s fine warm shape, remember this.   For all things, to store my energy and help me to sleep at night, say Confidence, Calm, Competence and see the dew inside the dew.   It is a Mantrayantra.  She’ll get the message soon.

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My heart centre is a clover.  She sparkles vividly white, scarlet and black.   These are the gunas.  They are also Rosebud’s Queen mother, who pricked her finger in the winter snow near the ebony wood, and wished for a beautiful child.

GALLERY 5

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I lost my curiosity in other peoples’ versions, because my own, steaming along in the subconscious, provides ALL.  When I open the trapdoor/manhole cover, and look …  there it is, flowing  from  springs of ageless Wisdom … thanks to the  training ground and challenges of this present life time:  thanks to the teachers and terrain of other life times back o’beyond, and to those to come.   ADONAI.

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GALLERY 6

Flora, 1956

Winter, after Botticelli, circa 2005

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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.

aquariel link

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/

A Poem: Wedding Rings

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Still at work on my next post !  which contains a few Botticelli-type sketches;  and preparing also  a new revision of my book Poems of Eclipse for ebook publishing.

Here is one of the poems  – it is called: “Wedding Rings“:

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NOTHING TOUCHES deeper.

Flung open, the frisson
of subtle body with lovers’ rub
blends essence,
reminding me of unknown
factor and fate.
To accomodate ‘another’
builds openly the natural state.

The root of eros, seen afresh,
surfs the wave –
the danger and thrill of mating.
In crystal ball, the babe is born.
Ripples, spheres in lake
melt in meeting
rain through rings of rain ;

the lover expands
through all my space

I am the rain.

I penetrate in play,
heedless of life’s damages,
fish that into little fishes swim,
compelling the sea of waves
throughout this room
unfathomed.

Thus, wedding rings
can bring delight
or else despair: a mutual rape
where rain and fish no longer play.

Dry land is a covered well,
a dance floor null and void.

May 1999 – from Poems of Eclipse

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GALLERY –
Doodlings of time-space diagrams and relationships in an old notebook (1989).
With the Lens – the inner eye –  we may view ourselves, each other and our odd combinations of confinement, co-dependency and release.

A sketch from an early notebook, of quantum physics, electron rotations and Life in general

A Story. On your bikes!

Story continues …

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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.

Aquariel Link – When reflecting on the Lovers …

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/

Tales from The Watershed: The Lens

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vesica by dino valenti

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IN THE 1970s, I joined a team of portrait painters.  We were commissioned to draw and paint children at boarding-schools for their parents;  at first we were called Portrait Artists Ltd;  later our manager William Deeves formed a registered charity – The National Portraiture Foundation.  Our work brought us a basic livelihood;  later, the Assocation’s additional aim, as well as introducing portraiture to households at a bargain rate, was to sponsor and train gifted young people.  

Working with a fraternity of senior artists, I enjoyed the intensive and (for me) exhilerating weekends of my artistic apprenticeship.  I learned to work fast and accurately,  drawing five and occasionally up to ten portraits in a single day.  In the evenings we hit the town, exhausted, and caroused.   We travelled and worked together, and formed  close friendships.  It was like a Renaissance bottegha.    

Sometimes I stop to reflect on my many hundreds of portraits in unknown living rooms up and down the country.  They were all done with a passion which glows.  Those children are by now grown up, with children of their own.  Occasionally we converge again, for me to sketch new additions to the family.   It was a remarkable period of human richesse, adventure and companionship.

(Gallery 1 – to view, click on any image, and wait to upload)

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At the same time I had a deep and prolonged relationship-stress at home.  Like the gems within a geode, its safety valve was my dreams at night.   I wrote them down, and they became the foundation for my spiritual journey to come – my Tales from the Watershed. (For others in this series, see under Categories.)

“The Lens” when I dreamed it in 1975, underwrote a tough growing curve.  My then partner was trying to turn me against my family and my grandparents.  

This tale of vision, an alchemical catalyst, breaks through the crust each time I rediscover it.   At times, life has to be hard and painful, and to crack, to let in the light.   

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Dreams No.203 – 6 November 1975:  “The Lens”

THERE’S A touch or fragrance of landscape – like winter in Wales.   It reminds me of Jim Ede.   I see his books in shelves of white weathered wood;  the backs of these books are a faded spectrum of grey, blue and dusky green like the sea.   The books are in my early memories of my grandparents.   Some of them are about mountains and the men who climb snowy Annapurna, and some have “Details” and “More Details” in them of Renaissance angels in the National Gallery.

These were my masters.   As a child I sat in a high chair at a round table with a big book open to a Botticelli madonna, angel, Primavera or cluster of hands, and copied them.   They taught me to draw.  They showed me how beautiful a line or curve can be, and its mythology.   There is no half measure of grace.   I drew what I saw, breathed the fragrance of those old pages.   The beauty is pain to hold until it can find again a pencil.

There is toast and honey for tea:  a droll solemnity in Jim’s blue eyes.  My grandmother’s voice is crisp as a bee in the Scottish hills, as she turns the old pages with me.  “Don’t fuzz the line, let it grow bold and clean.”

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(Gallery 2 – includes drawings circa 1956/7)

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How strange then !  on this journey with the other portrait artists on a job, somewhere near Malvern or the Welsh border, to find these very books on shelves in the house of shy George.  George is the new artist who joined our itinerant group.   He is “non-descriptive”.

I cannot describe the strange pleasure of discovery the mute volumes give me, or the delicate hues of their closed cloth covers,  but it brings me home to a vivid light in my grandfather’s eyes,  and the sharp smell of beeswax.   It is the in-dwelling essence also of this remote and hilly part of the country.   Many hills up here are untrodden, many small valleys unseen;  it rains, and cloud veils a sudden opening to the sun.   The woods, the villages and ways of life here, a closed and forgotten book, lie open to the sky.   A celestial radiance plays havoc within this house …   why has George inherited it?

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George, the shy one, invited us to stay with him rather than go to a hotel, for his house was near the school where we worked.   He speaks very little, wears drab dark garments, and never allows anyone to see his work.   The rest of us like to amuse, learn from, or draw moral support from each other.   We are qualified in the art of likeness, and do the same drawing over and over, more or less.    Sometimes I am arrested, by an angel glimpsed in the face of a child at school, and a touch of magic begins …  but George is a kind of non-person.  He whispers.  He leaves almost no traces of his passage on his surroundings.

The interior of his house is a kind of splendour.

He draws with his eraser.   He builds a delicate web with his pencil, then transforms it with the eraser to a textural smudge of suggestion.   He doesn’t like any of us to see what he is doing.   Under his cloak, behind his thick lensed spectacles, he hides a delicate draughtsman’s act of discovery and uncertainty.   The creature covers its tracks.    Yet he doesn’t mind us seeing his house – he suddenly decided to trust us.   So we ran all over it like children, in delight, curiousity and personal pique –  for we have not been kind to him behind his back, we laugh at his non-drawings.

We explored the bric a brac in timbered and palatial rooms,  the nameless antiques of personal history,  the vases of flowers on scrubbed white shelves of veined driftwood,  the drawings and canvasses on the walls,  some of these his own work.    The geometric flora of vesica pisces in medieval architecture is a recurring theme, and so is the zodiacal calender, containing detailed studies of local wild animals.  Circle enters circle, making love:  the oval lenses widen, giving birth to fishes and hexagonal stars.  Long wide corridors lead out into the gardens to view the woodland paths and thistle tufted meadows of George’s violet country.

How dim and dark his house looks, until you step inside.   In many of the rooms I found upon shelves, Jim Ede’s old books still standing.   Their silvering script seems to protrude through walls and out of doors, like the sky or sea within.  The wood came in with the sea.

So George also knows.

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And I wandered from George’s house into the extensive and rather untidy gardens.   A path through the cider orchard brought me to a heterogenous group of outbuildings, maybe the old stables, or a wattled barn with an apple-press inside, where tiny insects flit and drink.

But no, they resemble a castle.   As I came nearer, I noticed an ornate and graceful architecture.  Grass and weeds flourished untended;  a mixed growth of hazel and oak around it formed a natural glade.   I entered a serial maze.   One building opened or led loosely into the quadrangle of another through a graded sequence of archways growing at the same time greater and lesser.   The sequence was not a linear one.   Into an encircling depth of centre I travelled through dark stone walls, through alternating shells of greenery and masonry with a few old trees and some sheds for the chickens, garden tools and lumber.   It is like a rose.  It is all rather overgrown;  and suddenly every arch meets and opens into a single flower; and I am brought to a halt by a vault that surrounds me;   and through the high apex of the vault comes the light of the sky all around.

The vault enspheres the anthem of this space.

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I’m brought to the standstill of my breath by a wordless music.  A Gothic stone spiral around interwoven curves and planes of the arch, opens into, from and out of itself, a web of variations on one theme – where all ways meet.   Here is silence.   It leads the eye of my mind into contemplation, an angelic stair,  it leads me entranced to a kind of window,  crystal lens or sightless “eye” above me.

Yes.   The trance is entry, entrance.   I am drawn into the “ar’got” or secret tongue.   My vision drawn up into the web, the polyphony of stone and timber, evolved as one of those dark caves of limestone rock whose glory drop by drop the rain carved out through the aeons.   As stalagmite to stalactite, is my soul’s growth from the ground towards the point of meeting, of reflection in that imperceptible deposit of cosmic mineral.    Let us draw together through time, this space of meeting.

The moment of the whole is my small candle flame.  It lifts away from the wick to unite with itself in the upper waters on the rock – an inverted flame approaches.   The interpenetrating planes of the sphere – petals of  vesica pisces – dissolve as a droplet.   Not by earthly measure a large chamber, this vault; one candle would suffice to illumine it;  a single drop contains itself a sea.

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In caverns of limestone the work is through ages of darkness.   The candle must be brought to it, to reveal what is being formed.   The organs of our inner body, like that which gleams in the cave, work in the dark.  Beyond sight, they glow.  In the hollowing of the Gothic sphere or chamber, I am the hour-glass of the ages.   I see inverted or reflected pinnacles in the web – in an instant, yes, the instant of awakened vision, the fire of light.   It infinitely illumines.   The trance is my entry.  It subtly, inexorably captures my mind into Sight, into the loss of my known cities, into the persuasion of that lens in the roof.   I enter the focal point through a series of shells, of planes of vision superimposed.   I am bound into a spell, into the curve of an arc meeting infinite solvency around and into that dance,  the line of a drawing under the Master’s Eye.

In this organ I have no known learning, no “argot” or translation.   How am I to see?   Shall I look inward?   Only, it is said, to the extent that you are able to see from within your own dark,  may you begin to perceive What is looking in !

Who is being encountered and instructed in this place of meeting?  to grow from the ground as vision itself within the eye?  CREDO in unum deum, like flower to sun, through the resistor of the earthly membrane.   Lord, thou art God.  I am that I am:  TAT TWAM ASI.  Around it flow details and yet more details in the ballet of stone, of rocky argive,  or webbed timber.   I know nothing but a sudden flood of response to my calling, the music of aeons in an overpowering instant;   I am the draughtsman’s line.

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I am sensing also some springtime petals of cloudy blue.   Harebells, those modest dancing goddesses.   They are waving in the breeze, and it is sad.  “Bye bye my April, I am five and we are moving house.  I am five years old, and I have to go to school to learn to read and write.”

We moved away from Bransdale on the Yorkshire moors to go to school in Cornwall.  It was April 1954.  The harebells had just come through the long winter snow.

Bye bye Finella

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There is also in this magnetized place, a fear of what is capturing me;  of the loss of my innocence or my state of unknowing,  of bondage into a vibration or ray of light that might burn out all my centres.  I might submit to a dark or merely occult power which alienates.   But on that trembling verge, I have beauty, the Eye,  the incandescent power of seeing.

I could hear the voices of the other portrait painters nearbye,  they too were exploring the outbuildings, talking history, shop and pigments.  They teased their way along a string of covered cloisters.   Whether in the desire to share, or to boast of my discovery – for I am lonely with it –  I called out to them from the chamber,  “Come and see this,  come and look up through here!”

But they passed through some time ago with a glance, and went on.   They are not arrested by the sight of that strange Lens, and its actual relationship to life.   They cannot see it, even though they are artists.

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I can see, even though I am not really an Artist but –  an Astronomer.   The temple arresting my gaze, is an optical organ or instrument.   I am the evolving or revolving science of optics, a vision or lens, which is being developed for observing the universe.   I am designed to bring the stars closer, through instruments.

The temple is an observatory.   It was the pineal power of sight, both inner and outer, bestowed in times gone by, upon the human beings of today.   It tutors our perception.   The choices we make with our gift of sight follow the lines of personal evolution.

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Later on as I came away from this place, different frames of time superceded the vault to heaven.  My fascination with the lens turned malign.   The voltage in my cells was too strong.   As I had grown no experience in handling or mastering the gift, its flow of ions – condensed from aeons –  became a resistence factor against “me”.   It began, like matter over-energised, to work against the tide of my feeling,  in things I did or that happened to me.

No longer could I flow with  life.   My way across the grain distorted it.  It grew heavy in what I did and what received.   I stuck in the grain of a round wooden table, towards the edge, the river of life.  There were incarnations, apprenticeships and jealousies.  It crossed me – bad temper, frustration,  rebellion against the grain.   I was barricaded from vision, and defenseless against the barrage of all encompassing petty grievance – my immaturity, my envy of others.

I began to fear very much the Lens, and my temerity in looking through it.   I fear the betrayals to which I now am vulnerable as I make my way back to life through the trees, to the “Round Table” of my colleagues.   I am superstitious in the wood.

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(Gallery 3)

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The next thing I see is myself no longer at centre,  but on the rim of a circle or mandala.   We’ve left George’s house and the unassuming glories of his inner world, and are back at work drawing and painting schoolchildren.   We have been placed around a large table to work;  it is of light oak;  the flowing grain has trapped pale flecks like feathers or flocks of birds.   There isn’t much elbow room.  We are in each other’s way, looking at the other’s way of doing the same or the done thing, like a ferris wheel of mirrors.

My problem in this wood is the grain not of truth but of the copier.    Who is faking?   Who is the forger – the forager ! –  of works of art?

Peter has come.   Peter my father who is a farmer, brings his own grain of truth to the table, to join our circle.  He is getting out paper, charcoal,  making space for himself.   I always knew he has the eye.

Oh, but what is this?   He’s been commissioned to do two paintings here, in oil!   But he  jumped the grade – the new apprentices should begin with drawing.  Colour is the art of the master.   He’s not a painter, he’s never done a painting in his life!    My own two sitters never turned up, I lost time and money, dark jealousies within me oppress and sting my eyes with tears.   I’m in a long flag-stoned passage near the kitchens.  I can’t get through to them or their families on the antiquated country telephone with its knotty brown cord.   My anger and hatred detonate everywhere into everything that obscures, obstructs and harasses me.   Next I dialled Bill Deeves, our entrepreneurial manager, but got cut off.

I have no sitters, no work to do or be paid for,  and everyone else is productive and busy,  I’ve been let down,  the two absent sitters are two blanks of sight before me.   “If you don’t use a Talent, you lose it!” – they were given to him while I was away –  I was far away, in the strange Lens.   I might as well be blind.   Life gathers atoms of misfortune into tides of flickering pigment, should I look?    Or should I not?

Within the frame.  Within the wood. Within the body.

“Let thine eye be single, and thy body filled with light.”

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I had to walk here –  along the toils, the coils and branches that meander into the dark,  along the path of honesty.   This path, the work of the seer, is an essential thread or filament to unravel in my being.   It leads from light in the mirror, back to light that is its source, in the Self, the sacred Eye.

And i was late.

And i had lost all my gear.

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(Peter remarked in 1992, after he read the first draft of this story:  “What a masterly drawing you do of George and of his house.   Was there really this astounding Folly, this temple?   Your moment of seeing there, of Eternity, was like T.S.Eliot’s beside the sunken pool in the hidden garden –  ‘quick, quick, said the bird’.  

“Strange how at quite early ages we know we have the “sacred eye”, the gift that is both burden and light, and yet through time and time we cannot or will not use it, or forget it is there,  until another nudge reminds us of our work.   Never mind about being late when here is all, and once here you do not need your gear,  so it is better lost.

“What is ‘pineal’ sight?   Pineal is to resemble a pine cone,  or is the stalked Pineal endochrine gland in the brain.   Is it a folded upon itself leaf by leaf cone of inward and outward sight that unfolding radiates outwards,  seeing all?   And argo is jargon or slang of a trade or calling – in argot’s case,  usually of thieves?”)

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**

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.

AQUARIEL LINK

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/

Myths of Lord Siva – Tripurantaka

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This poem was a collaboration with Alan Jacobs.  It arose from his series “Myths of Lord Siva”, circa 1992, and it sits well with the Sacred India Tarot Siva/Parvati material.   I have pottered around with it from time to time, ever since Alan first introduced me to the wealth of the Sivaic language and archetypes in Southern India, and to the esoteric landscape behind Ramana Maharshi’s Self-enquiry.

Taraka Asura was of course the arch demon whose demise was destined only at the hand of Siva’s son, Skanda .

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Siva Tripurantaka

Demon Taraka’s three Asuric sons
became Ascetics to earn a Boon.
Moved by their tapas, Brahma
granted what they craved – Eternal Life!

“But,” he warned
“you cannot escape your Death.
If you would be happy, choose again.”

“Give us,” they said “three cities for a mere thousand years.
Then we’ll unite for a single Arrow
to finish us off !”
Replied rash Brahma:  “Yes.”

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Satan Maya conjured from virtual space
three titanic Cities
– brazen Gold, Silver nacre and Black iron –
for Taraka’s little Devils to ‘whelm the World.

They broke apart the Sacred, they violated all known Bounds.
The gods begged Brahma to destroy those awful Towns
whose magic centres fly about at will, and
once in a millenium, for one split second, align !

Said Brahma Creator:
“Who, Me?  Who else
but Siva Destroyer
strings that Bow ?”

As aeons into Chaos plunged,
Siva with his bride Uma, Daughter of the Himalaya
dallied, and held his fiery Seed.

At love’s creaming peak, He
the mighty One, aligned his Cosmic
third eye.

Fashioning from the grieving Gods his chariot and bow,
stringing three demon Citadels on eternal NOW,
he loosed his arrow … PFATTT !
What chance Tripura against the One?

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As with Lightning in reverse,
heaven’s Thread was pulled
across the sky
to snap and crack the Show !

Unwilling yet to burn
Time and Space to ash, the Lord
held back his fire, and let the White Bull,
his sperm among the Stars, roam free.

The fecund planet peoples
overjoyed, resumed
their long lost Natural State –
the Worlds returned to grace.

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The sage who lives on Siva’s hill
says: “mind turns Inward with dispassion. 
Realisation is slow. Who am I?
The One Self penetrates and permeates Triplicity.”

Brahmins pickled in priestly Lore,
say the Cities gold, silver and black, are Bodies
causal, subtle, gross.
In Desire’s shrouds,
they tightly bind and knot mens’ Souls.

Brahmins know for sure that Siva
Lord of the Dance,
consumes their learned Thread
right “Now”
within the “Here … ?”.

AJ JA 1992: 2009

Sacred India Tarot Siva – detail

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**

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.

AQUARIEL link

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/

The Sacred India Tarot Archive – 9 & 10 of Lotuses – Parvati Marries Siva

CONTINUING the Sacred India Tarot Archive, by Rohit Arya and Jane Adams;  with another rip-roaring chapter from the “Siva Purana”.  

In the Suit of Cups/Lotuses, we follow Siva and Parvati’s courtship into their marriage.  For a thousand years they resided on Kailas, behind the Himalayan range, to which all spiritual paths lead – through Badrinath, Nanda Devi, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Kamet (see recent posts on the Chakras.)

We left Parvati being pestered by sages in the forest, and particularly by her Intended, Lord Siva, who arrived in a funny mask, and bad-mouthed himself, to test her resolve.

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From the Siva Purana – A Reminder:

Parvati listened, threw her head back laughing,  and said  “O excellent sages!  My tenacity cannot be affected.   Being born of a mountain, toughness is congenital to my body.   Pondering over this with your short intellect, you will please desist from preventing me.   When you glorify Vishnu as the abode of noble qualities or as a sportive deity, I do not contradict.   But Siva is Brahman, unchanging and without aberration.  He assumes shapes and forms for the welfare of His devotees.  He does not make a show of worldly lordship; therefore He assumes the attitude and behaviour of great Yogins.   O brahmins, the Lord is devoid of attributes,  unborn, free from illusion, of invisible movement, and a cosmic Being.  He does not shower His blessings on the ground of faith or caste.  I know Him truly.  O Brahmins, if Siva does not marry me,  I shall remain for ever a virgin.   Even if the sun were to rise in the west, even if the mountain Meru were to move;  even if the fire were to be cool,  and even if the lotus were to bloom on a rock at the top of a mountain,  my stubbornness cannot be nullified.   I am telling you the truth.”

After saying thus, and bowing to those sages,  the Daughter of the Himalayas stopped and recalled Siva with an unruffled mind.   The holy men blessed her and returned to Siva’s abode.

In brief, Siva Himself then appeared to her as a fraudulent Brahmacharyin,  and did His best also, to deflect her devotion.   And even as Parvati in utter weariness was about to brush him off,  He assumed His true form,  embraced her and said,  “Where will you go,  forsaking me?   You are not to be discarded again by me.   I am delighted.   From today I am your slave bought by your austerities.   I am sold to your beauty.   Even a moment appears like a Yuga.   Even in the three worlds I do not see a beloved like you.  O Parvati, in every way I am subservient to you!   Your desires are granted.   O beloved, come near me.   You are my wife.   I am your bridegroom.   I shall take you immediately to my abode on Mount Kailas.”

Kailas & Lake Manasarovar

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From Rohit’s Book with the Deck:

“Joy pervades the Divine realms as Siva finally succumbs to love and marries Parvati.  All classes of living beings join the festivities led by the relieved devas. For Siva has promised them their deliverer – his son Skanda will be born, and he will kill the demon Tarakasura.  In his bliss he has even agreed to resurrect Kama, for as he comments wryly – “Am I too not under Kama’s sway now?” …

Sacred India Tarot 4 – Brahma, The Emperor

“The marriage of Siva and Parvati is the prototype for almost all Hindu weddings until today.  It is symbolically re-enacted in countless temples, while the Khandariya Manadeva temple in Khajuraho is one giant sculpture of the various stages of this Divine nuptial.  It has a resonance within the culture as an ode to supreme happiness that is simply not present in any other episode … Love should unite families, not disrupt the social fabric.  Even Siva the wild man, uncontrollable, bizarre, settles into the ritual order of the cosmos.  He becomes an example of Dharma.  To complete this reintegration into the social mainstream, the great god Brahma acts as the priest presiding over the ceremony. The accumulated powers of Yogic solitude will now be harnessed for the well-being of society and the world.”

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Visual reference for Siva/Parvati

Rohit’s Notes to Jane in 2004 – 9 of Lotuses:  Siva Marries Parvati

“The visual provided is almost self-explanatory.  Brahma is the priest performing the ceremony, so you might want to refer back to the Emperor card.  Also, please remember that nipples and pubic areas are to be carefully covered with drapery!”

Visual reference from comic book – the marriage of Siva & Parvati, and the gods petition Siva

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Jane’s Notes

How little they knew!  For the Dharma to bear fruit, an aeon of experiential bliss is required, while the world’s cosmic imbalance – the ravages of demon Taraka –  awaits resolution. In fact, Parvati was unable to conceive in the normal way.  Their odd shaped offspring, Skanda, Ganapati and others, would be born from drops of sweat, and from the friction of their inevitable quarrels.

Here is the finished card of their marriage ceremony.  As within a Vedic shrine, Brahma the Creator-god presides.  Parvati, the Daughter of the Mountain, and reincarnation of Siva’s earlier bride Sati, was born dark and comely, like Solomon’s queen.

Sacred India Tarot 9 of Lotuses – Brahma officiates the wedding of Siva and Parvati

Brahma is the first of the divine Trimurti – Creator, Sustainer, Destroyer.  The other two are Vishnu and Siva.  In Hinduism, Brahman is not Brahma.  Brahman is the One transcending every divine Face:  the un-named, ineffable and Immanent Presence, containing All.

As you may remember from previous Parvati posts, Brahma-Creator was impressed by Tarakasura’s demonic austerities – his powers of concentration – and unwisely granted him a boon of conditional immortality.  The one condition was for a son of Siva to destroy him.   Everyone knew this was impossible. Siva being a Yogi, had no interest in women.  So Tarakasura unchecked, meddled with the Universe, creating outrageous virtual technologies and reaping dismay in all beings.   This is an aspect of Brahma-Creator when it goes manic.

But the Great Yogi, meeting his elemental match in the Himalayan steadfastness of his future bride, at last bowed to Kama the god of Desire – whom his third eye had incinerated.

Sacred India Tarot – Kama god of desire

Sacred India Tarot – Siva incinerates Kama (5 Lotuses)

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Rohit’s Notes in 2004 – 10 of Lotuses:  Siva agrees to restore Kama

“The visual reference provides the template.  You could also use the Gangadhara Siva as further reference.  Basically it signifies a restoration of balance to the cosmos with the resurrection of the Eros principle which is Kama.  It completes the suit on a note of reconciliation and harmony.”

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Jane’s Notes

NB – we finally drew a brand new Siva Ardhanariswara for 10 of Lotuses, to embody this theme.  At one point, Rohit suggested I draw a little reconstituted Kama figure in the bottom corner somewhere.   This never got done;  but the restoring of Kama is adequately covered in the Royals of this Suit.  (See next post in this series.)

Sacred India Tarot World Shakti for card 21 – originally drawn for Queen of Lotuses

This is the first Queen of Lotuses – Rati, the wife of Kama – that I drew.  Her kundalini was considered so powerful that Rohit promoted her to World Shakti in the Major Arcana, and I drew a new Siva Natarajan for her consort in the World card.

Pradyumna the son of Krishna and Rukmini was originally intended as the Knight:  in the end re-shuffle, he became the King of the suit, and Kama himself the Knight.   I was then commissioned to draw a new sensual Rati for the Lotus Queen.

Sacred India Tarot, Kama’s wife Rati, detail

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Further Correspondence:  Rohit and Gautam to Jane, re Lotuses 10

20 October 2004 – “… card number 10, Siva agrees to restore Kama, I want an ARDHANARISWARA, which we can scan from the Presence of Siva book.  In the case of the card, the reconciliation and restoration of Eros to life can happen only by an integrated male and female energy, in short, the Ardhanariswara.  The figure standing by the bull is perfect to use. 

Ardhanariswara

“I want to get this across to Jane now, because the speed at which she is hurtling along, we might have the card ready before we can talk to her.  I also want Jane to do a Dattatreya.  I do not know where we will use it, but it certainly has some scope in the pack – perhaps as a bonus.

31 October 2004 – “I think we should switch characters of Kama and Pradyumna for King and Knight of Lotuses, as Pradyumna is the healed person, and Kama is still immature.” 

“With regard, Rohit.”

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Ardhanariswara in Elephanta cave

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Jane’s Notes

“Ardhanariswara” means “the Lord whose half is Woman” – the ultimate reconciliation:  the Great Work of alchemy:  a humane maturity.   Siva the solitary Yogi, Rudra the Wild Hunter, now basks in feminine beauty all down his left side:  she is seamless with his masculine power – the ultimate bliss, and union of the polarities.

The Bull Nandi is Siva’s vehicle and contact with the Earth.

The beautiful image above, is in the Elephanta cave on an island near Mumbai;  and here below is the finished Sacred India Tarot card Ten of Lotuses … as in The Chakras on the Tree of Life.  (and their sequel)

Sacred India Tarot 10 of Lotuses – Siva Ardhanariswara

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Correspondence circa November 2005 – Gautam and Rohit

“Hi Jane, 
“Herewith feedback from Rohit.  I was away in Ramana Ashram and Puttapurthi for a few days.  We loved the card, but Rohit had a few points.  Warm regards, Gautam.

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“Gautam – The pic is as usual great, but there is no Kama in it, so how do we know he is going to be restored to life – no gods either, as in the picture reference we sent, where they are pleading with him to restore Kama.

“It is a really good, even spectacular picture, but for once in this suit it has missed this point.  Maybe some sort of ghostly Kama re-materializing in a corner would do the trick?  I mean it could stand on its own, most Ten of Cups are boring and static.  This card at least looks beautiful and dynamic, but some thematic unity perhaps?

“I do not understand what Jane says about the colours as they seem okay, maybe they look even better in the original artwork.  Too much blue, is it?

“Rohit.”

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“Dear Gautam and Rohit
Yes, you had given me the visual reference of the gods begging Siva to reinstate Kama;  but you then wrote an email replacing this idea with Ardhanariswara ! – which I took literally.  In my view, the Ardhanariswara incorporates the restoration of Kama and harmony to the universe, and the gods begging for it in the same composition would already have been given it!  so their plea would be a bit superfluous.  

“It is very difficult indeed to squash additional history into these narrow oblong frames, compositionally – one needs the panorama.  So let me know what you think.  Perhaps I could reduce the existing Ardhanariswara in size, and have a bit along the bottom with the gods in it, rather like as in the Ace.

“The colour  – you are getting an electric blue which is OK but in the original this same blue includes violets, indigos, greys and dark and light.  Otherwise the colour balance is good.

Yantra Siva Shakti

“The Yantra I sometimes use is I think, one of the Mother Goddess ones, and shorthand for the Sri Chakra:  two shakti triangles descend through one ascending Siva triangle.  I have a reference to it here, I will find the book and look it up for you.

“Jane.”

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From the “Siva Purana” –  Part Two:  A Tale From the Marriage

HER age long weariness subsided.   When the fruit is realised, the exertion during the process of undertaking, perishes.   A wedding in every realm took place upon Kailas; the vast army of the mountains and the gods on coming together shone like the Eastern and Western oceans joined;  and when they met,  the Lord Siva and His sky-piercing father-in-law considered themselves blessed.   And thanks to the trident-bearing Siva’s nectarine glance, Kama emerged from the ashes, a comely, wonder-inspiring body with splendid dress and features, and Kama’s wife Ratti ceased her lamentations and rejoiced.

Siva took Parvati to a delightful, brilliant, and isolated place on Kailas, and told her,  “I am reminding you: If you remember your previous birth, speak out.  In my divine sport, you are always my beloved.”   Making a wonderful bed conducive to good sexual pleasure, rendered smooth and fragrant with flowers and sandal paste, and auspiciously supplemented with objects of enjoyment, Lord Siva, the bestower of honour,  indulged in dalliance with Parvati for a thousand years.   In that divine sport, at the mere contact with Parvati,  Siva lapsed in trance ;  she also,  and neither knew the day nor the night.

When Siva, following the worldly way, began to enjoy his pleasures,  a great length of time passed by as though it was a mere moment in their awareness.   And the gods gathered together gloomily, and their spokesman Brahma petitioned Vishnu: “It is for the fulfillment of our task that Lord Siva, leader of Yogins, free from aberrations, the unsullied,  revelling and resting in His own Self,  has married.   No son is born to Him.  We do not know the reason.  How is it that the lord of gods is delaying the action?”

Maithuna in Khajuraho – photo credit http://trailsntrials.in

Vishnu replied  “O, Creator of the Universe, there is nothing to worry about.   All will be well.   O Lord of gods, seek refuge in the great Lord Siva.   Those who dedicate their minds to Him joyously and devoutly have nothing to fear from any quarter.   The interruption to amorous dalliance will take place at the proper time, not now,  O Brahma.   Any task carried out at the proper time is crowned with success, not otherwise.   If the enjoyment is desired by Siva, who can stop him?   When another thousand years are completed, He will desist,  out of His will.   If anyone separates the copulated pair by tricky expedient, he will suffer the pangs of separation from his wife and sons in every birth,  and fall from perfect wisdom.   O gods, Siva’s act of enjoyment will extend to a thousand years of celestial calculation.  After that period is over, you can go there and do such things as will necessitate the fall of the semen on the ground.   The son of the Lord named Skanda will be born of that.   O Brahma, return to your abode.”

After saying this, the Lord of Lakshmi went back to his harem.   But on account of the dalliance of Siva and Parvati,  the Earth quaked with the weight along with Sesa the serpent chief and Kacchapa the tortoise,  who support Her.   And the cosmic air, the support of everything, was stunned.  The three worlds were acutely terrified and agitated.   Vishnu was again petitioned by the depressed gods; this time He took them all to Kailas.  Siva’s attendants would not at first let them in.   “How should they know what Siva, the great Lord, is doing in Parvati’s apartment? He has been there for many years.”   But Vishnu, the favourite deity,  went to the doorway of their apartment.  The tumultuous cry of the heaven-dwellers distressed by the demon Taraka, mingled with the sound of his eulogy to Siva, as he wept bitterly.

Hearing this, the great Lord, expert in Yogic theory,  yet free from lust,  did not emit his semen, as he feared to offend Parvati,  but came to the door where the distressed gods were gathered.   Siva cannot resist His devotees.   They begged Him,  “O Lord, carry out the task of the gods.   O great Lord, save the gods.  Slay Taraka and other demons, and take pity on us!”

Siva replied,  “O Vishnu, O Brahma, O gods, you are the goal of everybody’s mind.   What happens necessarily must happen.   Nothing can stop it.  It already happened.   Now, O gods, listen to what is relevant to the context.   Let him who will, pick up this discharged semen.”   After saying this, He let it fall on the ground.   Urged by the gods, Agni, the Vedic god of the fire offerings,  became a dove and swallowed it with his beak.   Meantime, Parvati arrived, saw what had happened, and blazed with fury.   She scolded Vishnu and the gods:

“Hi, Hi, O gods, you are wicked and selfish,  and you give pain to others.   For the sake of realising your self-interests, you all seduced the Lord and spoilt my pleasure.  I have become a barren woman.   Ye gods, after offending me, none can be happy!   Hence, O wicked heaven dwellers, you will suffer.   Let your wives be utterly barren.   And you, Agni, be the devourer of everything,  and let your soul be afflicted.   You are a fool, a rogue.   You do not know Siva’s fundamental principles.  You have come forward to carry out the task of the gods.  It is neither proper nor beneficent to you, to have eaten up Siva’s seed.”

After cursing the fire thus, Parvati the Daughter of the Himalayas, returned to her apartment along with Siva, dissatisfied as she was.

[Now, O Sage, listen to this story of the birth of Guha.  “Guha” means the Cave of the Heart.   Better known as Karttikeya or Skanda, he was born in a thicket, in a forest, out of the semen of Siva,  without the intervention of Parvati,  and fostered by the Pleiades constellation (Krttikas).   When grown into a youth, he became the Commander-in-Chief of Siva’s army,  and fought and slew the Demon Taraka.   As he killed (mara) the evil (ku) Asura or Demon, he became known as kumara.]

O Sage, hear now the details of His birth.  The gods are wont to partake of the offerings of food consigned to Agni, the sacred fire, in accordance with the Vedic text.   Hence, the gods became pregnant.   Unable to endure within them the force of the semen, they became afflicted,  overwhelmed and scorched.   They had already lost their wits with Parvati’s curse.   In this terrible state, again they sought refuge in Siva.   With palms humbly joined in reverence, they beseeched Him,  “O great Lord,  consort of Parvati,  what has happened now?   Your magical power cannot be transgressed.   We have become pregnant and also scorched by your seed.   O Siva, take pity on us.   Remove our miserable plight!”

Siva in Rishikesh

ON HEARING their eulogy, Siva came at once to the threshold,  and on hearing these pitiful words,  laughed and replied with His usual sympathy to His devotees, “O Vishnu, O Brahma, O gods, all of you listen carefully.   You will be happy.   At my behest, you shall vomit this virile semen of mine.”

Accepting this command with bent head, Vishnu and the other gods immediately vomited it out, after recollecting Siva as the Imperishable. Siva’s seed, lustrous and golden in colour, as it fell on the ground,  seemed to touch the heaven, huge as a mountain ;   and Vishnu and the other gods were relieved.   Only Agni was not happy.  The distressed Fire deity eulogised Siva with palms joined, and piteously spoke:   “O Lord of gods,  I am a stupid and deluded servant of yours.  Forgive me my fault.   Please remove my burning sensation – O Lord, benefactor and sympathetic to the distressed!”

Siva said delightedly,  “It was improper of you to swallow my semen.  Hence your sin became formidable at my bidding,  and the burning sensation was not cured.   Now that you have sought refuge in me, you will be happy, I am pleased with you.   All your misery will dissolve.   Deposit that semen carefully, in the womb of some good woman.   You will become happy and particularly relieved of the burning sensation.”

On hearing this, Agni replied,  “O Lord Siva, this splendour of yours is inaccessible and unbearable.   No woman in the three worlds except Parvati, can hold it in her womb.”  Then Narada, the great Sage and Messenger of the gods, counselled him:  “O Agni, listen to my words to dispel and relieve you of your burning sensation.   They will yield great pleasure and ward off your pains.   Take recourse to the following expedient, by Siva’s will.   O Agni, deposit this semen of Siva in the bodies of the ladies who take their morning baths in the mouth of Magha river!”

kamasutra image, Khajuraho

IT SO HAPPENED that the wives of the Seven Celestial Sages came to a certain spot, desirous to take their early morning bath in the mouth of Magha,  together with other rites and observances.   After the bath, six of them were distressed by chilliness,  and wished to warm themselves by the fire.   The Sage Arundhati of good conduct and knowledge, saw they were deluded by Siva’s magical art, and tried to dissuade them.   But the six ladies stubbornly insisted on going by the fire to ward off their chill.    Immediately, the semen particles entered their bodies through the pores and hair-follicles, O sage!   The Fire was relieved of that burning sensation.   And vanishing at once from the scene,  Agni in the form of a flame, went back happily to his region,  mentally remembering Your good Self, O Sage,  and Siva.

O AUSPICIOUS One, all the women became pregnant,  and badly distressed by that burning sensation.   They went home, and O dear, the husbands on seeing the plight of their wives were outraged.   Consulting one another, they discarded them;  and there was chaos in the ashram.   And in this miserable state, the six ladies felt very distressed indeed.

The Rishis wives were driven hither and thither, and at last managed to cast off the irritant semen in the form of a foetus on the top of Himalaya Mountain;  they were then relieved of their terrible burning sensation.   But unable to bear that seed of Siva, trembling with earthquakes, lava and avalanches of melting snow, the Himalaya range was scorched, cracked open and hurled it into the Ganga river.  And O great Sage, Mother Ganga rose up in enormous waves,  and deposited Lord Siva’s intolerable semen in the forest of Sara grass by the banks.

The semen that fell transformed to a handsome good-featured baby boy, glowing with glory and splendour,  lying among the reeds;   and the myriad inhabitants of the three worlds felt an unknown increase of pleasure within them.   O great Sage, on the sixth day of the bright half of the lunar month of Margasirsa, and with six faces, Siva’s son was born in the world.   At that moment, upon their mountain in Kailasa,  the Daughter of the Himalayas and the Lord Siva knew great joy, and rivers of milk exuded from Parvati’s breasts.  On reaching that place in the Sara grass, everyone felt very happy.   An auspiciousness blossomed throughout the three worlds, pleasing to the good,  and obstacles occurred to the wicked,  and particularly to the demons.   The sky throbbed with a mysterious sound of the Dundubhi drum.   Showers of flowers fell on the boy.  And O excellent Sage, there was great delight to Visnu and the gods, and jubilation everywhere.

Extract from Siva Purana

Kamadeva with his sugarcane bow

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THIS PARABLE has been culled directly from the Siva Purana which goes into much greater detail as to Parvati’s austerities, the betrothal and the wedding, the birth of the elephant headed Ganapati, etc.   The symbolism concerning the Pleiades constellation,  light from which split the core of Himalaya mountain,  and created “the river” and the elements,  is rich, racy and of multiple depth,  as the Puranas draw on yet deeper strata of Vedic material.  (It is commemorated in the greatest festival in Southern India,  Deepam, the Festival of Lights,  which takes place when the full Moon is in the Pleiades – November/December – and during which beacons are lit at the top of Arunachala and in Ramana Ashram itself.)   The relationship between the Sara grass, the flame and the mantric language is touched upon in the Guru Mantra Bhashya of Ganapati Muni. (A translation of this is available on request.)

Siva is the Puranic incarnation of the Wild Hunter, Rudra, and Parvati was Rudra’s erstwhile consort, Sati.   The fire of their yogic lovemaking, a still point (sthanu) in a turning world was immersed for aeons in the waters of primordial awareness,  from which innumerable forms of life proliferated.  

A rewarding and visionary study of these archetypal themes can be found in Prof.Stella Kramrisch’s Presence of Siva (published by Princeton in the USA,)  which skilfully and sensitively orchestrates together Vedic and Puranic strands of a recurring mythos  — Rudra-Siva and his fiery progeny.

The discovery of Ramana Maharshi as the archetypal Skanda or Kumara – the warrior who immobilizes the demon of the mind by Self-enquiry – is touched upon philosophically in the Ramana Gita, by his spiritual “brother”,  Ganapati Muni.  The Muni’s Forty Verses in Praise of Ramana appraise him thus: 

Sacred India Tarot – Ramana as Skanda (Knight of Staves/Wands)

“WHO HAD,  in foregone times,
pierced through Krauncha hill, 
foregoing the joy of being fondled
on his mother Parvati’s lap, 
that he might incarnate in human shape as Ramana 
to pierce the dark
that densely encircles man on Mother Earth 
whose heart now floods with joy on account of Him!”

(Skanda, the son of Siva and Parvati, is famed in the Puranas to have pierced this hill and broken it to pieces.)

“Salutations to the One
who has transcended all qualities, 
the astute celibate,  the one with human habilments, 
the Master and Slayer of Tarakasura!

“Here is no divine peacock that can bear you; 
no Ganges you can bathe in;  no nectar of mother’s milk 
from Parvati’s breasts,  no celestial choir of vina-players to sing to you;

“Oh!  Pounder of Krauncha hill! 
How is it that you yet abide in Arunagiri?”

Kavyakantha Ganapati Muni
from  Forty Verses in Praise of Ramana

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For 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.

 

Aquariel Link – “Perhaps Fission is a Learning Curve to Fusion?” – 8 May

Jane Adams

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.

All original 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/

Maps of Life on the Tree

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Collecting here a few handy maps of the Tree, I plan to rest the blog for a few days, as I go to a family celebration of my father being now 90.

Fore and aft my journey with the Chakras and the Tree, I savour my parental “human landscapes” (see earlier posts.)  They are the left and right pillars in my Tree.  They form the arch where through I enter “that untravel’d world whose margin fades, For ever and for ever as I move.”  (Tennyson)

Next week I shall resume and complete the story of Siva and Parvati in the Sacred India Tarot Archive.  Also, a Watershed tale, called “The Lens”.

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Tree of life, showing the BOTA tarot keys on the 22 paths

This shows where the Tarot Keys are placed on the Tree, between the 10 Sefiroth.  Around the top of each Sefira is written its type of Intelligence.   Each Tarot Key/Path has its own Intelligence also.  For instance, Tarot Key 21 the World is called “the Administrative Intelligence”.  Tarot Key 19 the Sun is called “the Collecting Intelligence”.  Tarot Key 18 the Moon is called “the Corporeal Intelligence”. The Magician – Key 1 – is “the Intelligence of Transparency”. To learn more, contact B.O.T.A.org

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This illustration shows my old Hermetic Tarot arcana (drawn in 1990/91) on the Upper face paths of the Tree.

Tree of Life upper face, showing hermetic tarot Arcana

No room on the paper for more – I shall do the rest in due course.

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And now, our span of Life on the Tree …

The Seven-year cycles on the Tree of Life

See earlier post, The Seven Year Cycles on the Tree of Life.

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Here is the Indian version:

Tree of Life showing the Indian shankara model of the Three Gunas

In Kabbalah, the right-pillar of Solomon’s Temple is active:  the left-pillar is receptive, and the centre pillar is Consciousness – as in the electric circuit.  It corresponds with the Indian Three Gunas or qualities, red, black and white – fiery-passionate-projecting,  cool-intertia-veiling, and their equilibrium – Purity ascending.   We see also the Indian view of GILGALEM, the whirlings, in the Rajas or creative tendency.

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This picture holds a story of life up the Tree:

Tarot Arcanum 18, looking up the Tree from Malkuth through Yesod: the path through the Moon

It was painted when I was studying an earlier version of the Paths.

Hebrew letter Qoph, drawn as a Zain (sword) and crowning Kaph (grasping hand)

This Piscean Tarot Key is in fact assigned to the 30th path – Netzach Malkuth – and to the Hebrew letter Qoph, whose sign is Pisces and the feet.  So that should be the letter over the Moon’s face – not Tzaddi.  In my old system also, this path was assigned to Yesod-Tifareth, moon-sun, persona-Self;  the path of honesty, of trial and probation.   Each system responds according to experience.

Key 18 is called the Corporeal Intelligence:  the repair and renewal of our cells when we sleep or rest …  the embodying and testing process as we travel life’s path.  Early life forms clamber out of the waters onto land;  animal consciousness dimly perceives the human sunrise.   Into our dark shadows, light yet gleams.  The letter Qoph means the back of the head –  medulla oblongata and the primordial reptile-brain .   So this Key rules the autonomic nervous system.

Indeed Pisces is at home here:  the feet and their reflexology.  Through the sole of the foot, the organs of our body as converging meridians, touch earth, sand, water, warmth.

How like an embryo it is!

The two towers are the gate of our body or “known” threshold, beyond which the Spirit seeks its companions.  Along the undulating path beyond the towers, the terrain gradually rises, so the lowest points are above the highest reached, erstwhile.  Take heart from temporary depressions!

This is an example of how each Tarot Key may be portrayed as the Tree and Sefiroth proportionally – looking up into it.

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Here again is the map I drew last week:

Fontanel or fountain – the Chakras on the Tree, according to BOTA tarot

The Chakra “levels” are assigned to paths/Tarot keys between the Sefiroth.  “Mars” is the Tower path (the “Exciting Intelligence”), bridging Hod to Netzach:  the Crossing of the Red Sea. The Tetragrammaton triad appears, because the pin-pricks to outline it in that Aquariel post came through into the paper on which I drew this figure.   Naturally they are incorporated!

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And here is the heart of the matter:  the path linking Malkuth to Yesod, the Foundation in the root stem.  Saturn – the planet assigned to The World tarot key – rotates in her Rings – toutes directions.   The Understanding:  the weathercock:  the Earthbound.

The World compass at the heart of the matter

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She dances in the hidden yet outgoing Centre of the Cube of Space.  In the B.O.T.A. teaching, the centre, the faces and corner edges of the Cube, and the three directional axes, are each assigned to a planet/zodiac sign/Tarot key.  I drew the interior cube in slightly different perspective, to define it from the geometric projection.  At its heart, where all points converge, you can just see the Saturn glyph, and a tiny TAV.   In my view, Saturn is the musician of the universe, shaping the structure and form of Beauty.   On the Tree of Life, Saturn is Binah, the Understanding … or literally, standingunder.

The Cube of Space, all points of the compass, showing the positions of the Tarot Keys

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This morning I am thinking about stand-waves – how the current flows through loops and bumps in a river down gradients and around hidden rocks. In the same way, gravity is curved to the bumps and vortices in spacetime.   Observe the standwave of my physical body, constantly being replaced … the I-thought constantly replaced, substantiated, dying and being born:  countless incarnations, each one seems to last a lifetime, each a moment of ultimate diversity.

Observe the power of that magnetic field which keeps the standing-wave in the river steady as the whole world loops and swirls through it.

Here are two sketches of little surfing demons;  they show the principle however !

Rollercoaster standwave, 1987

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Surfing, 1987

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Who walks on the water, like Jesus?

Here is my portrait of Franz Liszt composing his Legende 2 of St Francis de Paule:

Liszt Legende No.2 – St Francis de Paule

Links:  Perlemutter, – Balasz Szokalay, – Brendel (St Francis Preaching to the Birds)

(The first two recordings are interesting, particularly the Perlemutter one in 1939. The more recent live one by Balasz Szokoly has a noble quality.  I searched for Brendel playing it, but could only find his Legende No 1 – “St Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds”.  I include it – do stop and listen to it ! – because it is exquisite.)

The Legende No.2 rumbles up and down the keyboard like a great storm at sea.   The story is of a saint who needed to cross the water.  He had no money, and the ferryman refused to take him.   To the ferryman’s horror, the saint calmly followed the boat.  Great waves arose, and the boat almost capsized.  The saint walked on the sea with the heart’s glowing coin of coal in his hand, and quelled a mighty storm.

I have this feeling today, that I sit within a lens, in the core of the seed.  I breathe a rainbow fountain.   I visualise the paths of the Tree in their brilliant colours – my moon-boat.  There is no call to go anywhere, because the within is deep, unspoken.  I entrust myself to the shining mist.   Over the waters, my un-named teacher approaches, holding aloft the cross of the Rose, and in his other palm, a sacred fire – the SUN.   He is neither burned nor drowned.

Malkuth, with paths Qoph, Shin, Tav

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End of April is my each-year’s turning point.   Since my teens, each 27 April passing, something is glimpsed, which changes the particles.  In 1950, a French Himalayan expedition went to look for their mountain, Annapurna.  All the existing maps were wrong, and the surrounding mountainous terrain very difficult.  But on 27th April, they reached a high pass from which they saw the Goddess for the first time.  They called it Le Passage du 27 Avril.  They could see also, the way to Her through the deep dark valleys.

Annapurna Premiere 8,000 was my favourite book when I was a teenager.  I learned to speak French through reading it in the original.   This year, again I saw something.   The Saturday 27 April Independent – glimpsed at the supermarket – carried a photo of the SUN, entitled “The Future just got Brighter”.  The article is about the ITER project to replace our divisive nuclear fission technology with nuclear fusion – literally in Tarot terms, the “Collecting Intelligence” of unlimited solar power.  It cannot be used for military purposes, nor can it poison the environment, being its source.  The only small waste product is useful helium.   The centre for this project is Cadarache in southern France;  there is also one near Oxford in UK.  Since 1985 when Russian scientists first published the process, an unprecedented concordance of 34 countries collaborates.  The projected date is 2050.

I shall record my impressions of this article, in Aquariel in due course.   It looks as if there is light under the horizon.

Annapurna as glimpsed from the Pass of 27 April 1950

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I heard someone say, the other day:
“As Attachment withers, Love grows.  Then there is movement.”

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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.

Aquariel Link

 

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/