Plato’s Cave

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Sages by the holy hill – Ramana, Poonja and devotee

I am conditioned by a spiritual teaching: to keep quiet in personal matters – why? Because – the noise and pain is on the surface, and cannot transform anything inside its own scarring.   To keep quiet and open with a situation as it changes, is trans-formative.   Instinctively, intuitively, I know this, and its potential awakening.   But  I want to tell, and it is in me a stuck clamour, when the personified fragments which come out, are untrue to my truth.   Conscious with and as these painful personified fragments till they fade … — they fade and flutter like Siva’s grey ash turning white. .

Jung said in The Red Book, “Then turn to the dead, listen to their lament and accept them with love. Be not their blind spokesman.”  He adds this to the Christian law of love and redemption. .

“… Have reverence for what has become. … If you know what the dead demand, temptation will become the wellspring of your best work, indeed of the work of salvation. When Christ ascended after completing his work, he led those up with him who had died prematurely and incomplete under the law of hardship and alienation and raw violence. The lamentations of the dead filled the air at the time, and their misery became so loud that even the living were saddened, and became tired and sick of life and yearned to die to this world already in their living bodies. And thus you too lead the dead to their completion with your work of salvation.” .

Jung’s mandala to the flowering dead.  They are the souls also of our previous lives and formation.  On the compass points, the two vertical gates contain “animus” – he describes them as an elder sage and a magical or cthonic one     The horizontal gates contain  “anima” – the dark and the light womb or Mother.

Recent unbearable impressions: a ten year old boy in Gaza going crazy because all his family are killed by another bomb from Israel.  Small girls in chains, being dragged to unknown husbands as cattle.  The great Tree Spirits of the rain forest being slaughtered, torn, and replaced by tidy rows of dark-green palm slaves.  Cattle jammed in desert corrals somewhere in America, like ants, with giant trucks driving through them with “feed” – concentration camp, this is what humans eat.  Fish being vacuumed out of the sea.  The human wound and greed spills poison into nature and the oceans.

It seems to me now, that humans in the retro trap of aggressive wealth, cannot change their nature.  But souls who are incarnating into the human race at present, can and do.   A time approaches, when the above scenes of inhumanity are inconceivable.  Something emerges through the dead end: the truth of living and dying; and living and dying.

Earth, water, air

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In my mind, I am, you are, a human child – a culture, a civilization, with countless humans (thoughts) passing through, living and dying, many are of the same herd type, they bleat like distressed sheep.   In Plato’s cave are Shadows! The parade is endless. They are all mine, since the fire glowing behind me throws “mine” onto the cave wall, which attracts the collective dark parade from nowhere to no place.

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http://iblog.stjschool.org/dsader/2006/02/12/platos-cave-allegory/

The ascent to the sunlight is under the road-bridge. Along the road-bridge come the procession of shadows and lives which the firelight projects onto the cave wall in front of the bound souls.

I remain fascinated by the primal fire of life which projects these shadows – the fire is behind me, the Karmic furnace – yet there is an opening to my right, and the choice is to turn and venture up that passage into the open, into the direct, warm light of the Sun itself.

I know all the shadows are still there flickering with their fire in the cave, an essence of my identity, my root in the ground.

cave and soul, peak district, 1969

I know when I am outside, by looking back at the cave entrance, and seeing it in its place.   I cannot avoid the stress of my being, and I often get engulfed by it.

 

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But the Hermit with the greater lamp, dawns within the dark, and indicates the Way Through to the sun, the beauty of the orchard outside the cave; where solar fruit drops from the boughs.

And relax, letting go the stress in living and dying …  let my solar plexus loosen, let breath be drawn unobstructed, all the way down into my root chakra, through the dantien.   It rounds itself, like an earthenware vessel which carries cool water from the well.   In the water are reflected and born again, the distant stars and Suns.

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This is Alchemy.

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All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright(c) janeadamsart 2012-2014.  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 Pool of Life

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Liverpool Cathedral

This post is a partner to yesterday’s Liverpool sketchbooks (for my archive) – Jung’s dream in 1927 of Liverpool.

His pioneering journey into the unconscious was extraordinary and illumined the way for generations to come.  As I and many others travel on his shoulders, the places he visited keep joining up with mine, and feel startlingly familiar.  I had similar dreams of a dark city, mountainous in scale,  with a glowing centre and even a pool or inlet from the sea.  It was  the city of the mind – a many towered labyrinth.   In one of these dreams I was a fish in the pool, and someone threw a line, hooked my nose and flipped me onto dry land.  Ouch!

Here are extracts from the chapter Confrontation with the Unconscious in Jung’s  “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”.  The chapter first describes the creation of the Red Book. Then:

“I began to understand that the goal of psychic development is the self.  There is no linear evolution;  there is only a circumambulation of the self.  Uniform development exists at most, only at the beginning;  later everything points towards the centre .  This insight gave me stability, and gradually my inner peace returned.  I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the self, I had attained what was for me the ultimate.  Perhaps someone else knows more, but not I.

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Window on Eternity by C G Jung – Red Book

“In 1927 I obtained confirmation of my ideas about the centre and the self by way of a dream.  I represented its essence in a picture which I called ‘Window on Eternity’.  The picture is reproduced in ‘The Secret of the Golden Flower’.  A year later I painted a second mandala, with a golden castle in the centre.  When it was finished, I asked myself, ‘Why is this so Chinese?’

The Golden Castle by C G Jung – Red Book

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“… Shortly afterwards I received a letter from Richard Wilhelm enclosing the manuscript of a Taoist-alchemical treatise entitled ‘The Secret of the Golden Flower‘, with a request that I write a commentary on it.  I devoured the manuscript at once, for the text gave me an undreamed of confirmation of my ideas about the mandala and the circumambulation of the centre.  That was the first event which broke through my isolation.  I became aware of an affinity;  I could establish ties with someone and someone.

“In remembrance of this coincidence, this synchronicity, I wrote underneath the picture which had made so Chinese an impression on me:  ‘In 1928, when I was painting this picture showing the golden, well fortified castle, Richard Wilhelm in Frankfurt sent me the thousand year old Chinese text on the yellow castle, the germ of the immortal body.’

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“This is the dream I mentioned earlier.  I found myself in a dirty, sooty city.  It was night, and winter, and dark, and raining.  I was in Liverpool.  

With a number of Swiss – say, half a dozen – I walked through the dark streets.  I had the feeling that there we were coming from the harbour, and that the real city was actually up above, on the cliffs.  We climbed up there.  

It reminded me of Basel, where the market is down below and then you go up through the Alley of the Dead, which leads to a plateau above, and so to the Petersplatze and Peterskirche.  

“When we reached the plateau, we found a broad square dimly illumined by street lights, into which many streets converged.  The various quarters of the city were arranged radially around the square.  In the centre was a round pool, and in the middle of it a small island.  

While everything round about was obscured by rain, fog, smoke and dimly lit darkness, the little island blazed with sunlight.  On it stood a single tree, a magnolia, in a shower of reddish blossoms.  It was as though the tree stood in the sunlight and was at the same time the source of light. 

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“My companions commented on the abominable weather, and obviously did not see the tree.  They spoke of another Swiss who was living in Liverpool, and expressed surprise that he should have settled here.  I was carried away by the beauty of the flowering tree and the sunlit island, and thought, ‘I know very well why he has settled here.’  Then I awoke.

Swan Hebrew letter Beit

“On one detail of the dream I must add a supplementary comment:  the individual quarters of the city were themselves arranged radially around a central point.  This point formed a small open square illuminated by a larger street lamp, and constituted a small replica of the island.  I knew that the ‘other Swiss’ lived in the vicinity of one of these secondary centres.

“This dream represented my situation at the time.  I can still see the greyish-yellow raincoats, glistening with the wetness of the rain.  Everything was extremely unpleasant, black and opaque – just as I felt then.  But I had had a vision of unearthly beauty, and that is why I was able to live at all.   Liverpool is the ‘pool of life’.  The ‘liver’ according to an old view, is the seat of life – that which ‘makes to live’.” 

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(The Liver of Life!   His Window of Eternity mandala shows – like a grid – the city districts as holograms.  Each is as the whole, with its illumining centre and radii:  our human connectivity, beyond the box of space and time:  macrocosm of the microcosm.  When we awake we discover our imagined isolation was a fantasy.)

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“This dream brought with it a sense of finality.  I saw that here the goal had been revealed. One could not go beyond the centre.  The centre is the goal, and everything is directed towards that centre.  Through this dream I understood that the self is the principle and archetype of orientation and meaning.  Therein lies its healing function … Out of it emerged a first inkling of my personal myth. 

“After this dream I gave up painting mandalas …” 

Jung age 85

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The Liverpool dream looks to me like a four-dimensional snapshot of Jung’s whole working life.   The lamp which the Red Book kept alight during World War One, glowed very deep, hidden inside the dark, but it passed from soul to soul.

During the following decades, Jung worked with clients – high achievers – who were deeply depressed and searching for a reason to live at all.  European society, collectively shattered by the carnage in the trenches, and with Nazism on the rise, endured dense clouds of scepticism and banality – the mind’s dark glamour.

He discovered that if he encouraged his patients to paint what they felt and saw, something in them took charge of the process and led them to an unexpected interior contact.  As the healing awoke, it took charge of the patient who began to open doors.  

Dr Jung found it had little to do with himself as therapist.  His job was to lead his patients to the underground stream, on which they floated paper boats.   Art therapy was born.   It is for ourselves, each one, to contact the unique inner mystery which unites us.

Wandering Fool with DNA and paper boats – 1988

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Jung himself had pioneered the way, through the Red Book;  he told very few people about it, (though he showed some of his paintings to those whom he trusted) – but it rekindled by morphic resonance, as in “Window of Eternity”.

In his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul, he describes the new discoveries with his clients.

Jung and his house at Bollingen

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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 2012-2014. 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/

 

Liverpool Art School 1969 – Sketchbook 6

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Here is another Liverpool sketchpad from 1969.  I was at art school there, for a year.  You can use the Search button on this blog, to find my other Liverpool sketches  – I use my blog to archive them !

I shall companion this post with my next one – Jung’s account (in Memories, Dreams, Reflections) of his vision in Liverpool.  He called Liverpool the pool of life;  the dark city flowed around the glowing centre of a mandala.  It led him to the Way of the Golden Flower.  He had just finished painting a mandala which he called the Golden Castle – through its portal, he entered the I Ching.

Some of the drawings in this post are of London, where my Italian sweetheart lived.  I hitch hiked south at weekends, to be with him.

City scape

The Anarchist

the Anarchist’s thoughts …

and hitch hiking thoughts on the motorway

world

nuns at play

snow

winter ice

Vecchio padre tamigi

Thames and plane balls

Ray Fields & Mr Daffern

Tutors

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meeting

guests

In those days, I met and talked with strangers a great deal.  There was something to learn from everyone;  I was a captive audience.

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This sequence is more visionary:

kids in liverpool 8

Cathedral

Vision

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Liverpool art gallery

opinions

lecturing

pop poem

pop star

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I just found this passage in my journal, early spring in 1969.  My meeting with John left an indelible impression in my pool of life, and a sketch:

“It is all a bit like practicing Bach – the complexity of fugal themes and analysis of fingers, with which one has to think hard and precisely; and the sudden resolution, the fitting into place of a phrase like a jigsaw piece in harmony – before it flies apart and you have to work some more. The sudden realisation comes out of the bed of a sea of data, facts and study.  Intuition must have form to pass through as expression, otherwise it is dumb – unresolved spasmodic movements in the dark.  Intuition must be completed through a receiving set of Reality, to come to the light – as music, as painting, as love.

“I’m spending Saturday afternoon at John’s, practicing.”

John the Organist

“Here is John playing the organ.  He lectures also at the art college.  He is from Trinidad.  He is an aggressive person, tremendously active intellectually – immersed in philosophy and music.  He pushes his argument to the bitter end, just for the hell of it, and says he doesn’t have many friends, he prefers to live off his own means.  He “travels” in his room.  I am fascinated by his personality.  He has no time for refinement:  it might weaken him.

“He admires intensely the ancient Greeks, whom he emulates in his direct, self sufficient state of enquiry.  He likes to be with people who spark off debate which he carries to the end of the road and beyond.  More an organist than a pianist, he makes music with all of himself – ‘Here I am!’ – he thrusts.   Fred who visited, heard me playing, and said it was interesting to hear a woman on the piano.  ‘Makes a change from your brute force, John!’

“The pair of them went out shopping in the freezing snow and ice, so I had some time to myself.  I try to be a still, small rock of truth somewhere in myself, over which the waves wash their colours.  My contacts with people are intense;  at the same time I can live from my own means …  I don’t want to copy their styles, I don’t want to crash through a Brahms sonata I grew up with, for I knew its exquisite pain when Aunty Lonie and my father played it together – the same exquisite pain is in sex – I hope one day to climb the mountain.

“John and I like discussions which fly from pole to pole, and find each other interesting as opposites;  but I am too bendy so he gets bored.  He is a hard man; he allows human frailty no room;  I live with it because I have no choice.  We both stick to our guns.  In the evening after we had tea, two people came with their little two year old daughter who said “A garden on the wall!” when she saw the wood-carving hung there.   She is at the age of fascination.  Her dad is an architect with a gentle face, a “street acquaintance”.  Because I was feeling defenceless and raw, events and people took on a magnified intensity, harsh and new.  I knew suddenly, a powerful music of life.  John put scraps of Messiaen on the record-player…

“Later in the evening, John said ‘Would you like to come and play the organ in the Swedish church?’ The place we drove to, down dim frosty streets, was in an unfamiliar part of Liverpool, nearby.  Suddenly we found ourselves in a warm room with Swedish lamps. It was a Swedish mariners’ club, and rather elegant.  The TV was hidden;  a few men with jutting Nordic faces and bristly hair sat on settees and drank black coffee.  There was a girl there, a trainee occupational therapist.  She was working in a mental hospital and found the experience depressng.

“I’d like to speak their steely language, and to see the midnight sun.  John is like them.  He and I went upstairs to the circular vaulted church, hard and white, where the organ was. He is black but his mind is blown from the North.  Sitting on the altar step I listened and watched his feet fly around on the pedals, his silhouette dark against the keyboard lamp.  The music of Bach and Cesar Franck lifted my thoughts in great celestial waves;  I felt so HIGH.

“When I had a go, I tried to synchronise both hands and feet in the architecture which is organic harmony.  The place had a strange atmosphere, like a German expressionist film.  I felt  ‘resurrected’ and on the pulse of great mysteries.

From journal, early spring 1969

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students

teachers

and teachers

Concert at the Phil

Charles Groves conducting the Liverpool Philharmonic

The Principal

Learning?

Dali

Ray Fields

I didn’t mean to be an angel. I try to hide my wings

That picture of an angel in society, feeling vulnerable and uncomfortable – I dreamed it, the way it spoke, and the tender buds behind the shoulder blades.

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These sketches are mostly of London, and contain an awakening.

By the river 1

By the river 2

Dali – photo cutting

Battersea power station

The figure in the smoke above Battersea Power Station is a “Wicked Prince” searching for a Ruby.  Whenever he rolls the plain grey rocks and stones around in his search, there is thunder.  When I was a child, my grandfather Jim Ede told us tales of The Wicked Prince year by year.   The saga ended at this point when I was about twelve;  Jim shut his mouth – though we begged him to go on – and wouldn’t tell us any more.

The Wicked Prince is still on his adventurous quest.  He is locked up in the sky.  He seeks the Ruby –  alchemical tincture of the Stone:  a rare wine that grew in the water:  a wine that grows in the rain.

Battersea Power Station was in those days still functioning, and a truly marvellous building – created by the architect of Liverpool Anglican Cathedral.   It lifted my soul.

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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 2012-2014. 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: Arrows Queen & King – Draupadi and Garuda

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Shape shifter – Eagle King (2002)

With the Queen and King of Swords (Arrows), this suit transmutes to its creative realm of power and grace – Indra’s thunder and Draupadi’s forest magic.

Sit in the forest and hear the rainfall: the swords of the sunlight, reaching earth.  Throughout the suit of Arrows which express the Laws of Heaven, we lived, accepted and illumined our Shadow.  As often said before in this series, the Arrow turns into a Wand – a staff of authority – powered by eagles’ feather.

Rohit’s Notes – 2004 “Some things about Draupadi are very clear.  She was fantastically intelligent, very beautiful and a very tough cookie.  She was also in all the descriptions rather voluptuous, and – we need to be very careful about this – her skin was black.  

“In fact, her first name was Krishnaa – the feminine of Krishna –  and it means the same thing: Black.  She had extremely long unbounded hair.  She is like the Queen of pentacles, but without the softness;  a more intense, slightly angry expression, as her temper was famous, and holding a bow and arrow as she also practiced archery.  Her dark skin is essential;  for too long, India has depicted her with peaches and cream.  She should be clad in sky blue clothing.  She had a peculiar preference to stand and dispute matters with her husbands the Pandava princes instead of sitting down.  So she should be standing upright, perhaps leaning on her bow.”

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Jane’s Notes – This Queen is liberated from prejudice and cruelty to the feminine.  She is no copy or competitor of the male.   She stands in her strength and knowledge, having loved her men, carried their children and won her battles.  She has in her the hidden force of the forest, the earth and the stars.   Her consort is the Eagles’ strength and vision, riding the skies and watching the rivers.

This woman bears fruit, wherever she is not demonised by civil wars, religious dogma and the media.  The shadow of sexual ignorance, inflation and persecution is still a core wound of our world today, in every form of waste and tribal conflict.  But the liberated core eros, the rose of life in men and women, is human evolution … and wide like an eagle to the sky, it opens wings.

Look within my mind, when it is closed.   Whose battle standard do I blindly follow?  Whom am I taught, by political Spin, to hate? – where do I vote with the herd, without knowing?   The Spin-word is interesting, implying the random placement of a gaming wheel.  I borrow my opinions from other opinions, and put my stake on them.

This woman has no stake, but truth.   Do you dare?

SITA visual reference – Draupadi

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Rohit’s Notes – from his Book with the Deck: “One of the greatest and saddest women in Indian myth is Draupadi – the dark beauty – the daughter born of Divine fire to King Drupada.  She is one of the five exemplars of chaste, wifely devotion (the original meaning of Siva’s first wife Sati) and yet her Karma caused her to simultaneously have five brothers as husbands. 

Sacred India Tarot – Krishna in Mahabharatha – Detail

“In an age of polygamy, rife with hatred and jealousy, Draupadi was universally acclaimed for not only living in peace with her husbands and their co-wives, but for having gained their overwhelming love and respect too.  For everyone she was the pinnacle. 

“The inspiring eloquence that characterised her speech gave her the best lines in the Mahabaratha epic.  Her best friend and only intellectual equal of the day was the god Krishna.  Draupadi was as great a warrior as her husband Arjuna, as wise as his eldest brother Yudhistara, as tempestuous and generous as the middle brother Bhima, as versed in statecraft and the arts as the youngest twins, her husbands Nakula and Sahadeva, and yet left doubting if any of them really loved her.

“She was also the most beautiful woman of her time, and her great spiritual powers had rendered her eternally youthful.  The epitomy of grace under pressure, she would not however, forgive and forget lightly.  Every injury and slight had to be avenged, preferably in blood, and crossing her was normally a death sentence.  Yet she could display a calm mercy when everybody was seething for blood; her most magnificent moment being sparing the life of her childrens’ murderer.

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“In a reading:  Hugely talented and capable people … having tasted sorrow, they prefer to go it alone.   Independent action and thought … Extremely charming and persuasive but … very combative on behalf of those they like, of for issues they believe in … Cannot be manipulated or emotionally blackmailed.

“Shadow – neglectful in relationships, especially of children …   Intolerant and troubled.  Detached misleading flirtation which lands other persons in hot water.  Divorce, separated, widowed, multiple relationships or the energy thereof … Cold fury if crossed.  Dangerous enemy.   Are you trying to do everything by yourself?   Unlucky in love?  Do you need to manifest your strength and not depend on others?”

I drew these two Queens (and many others) when I was about eight years old.

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SACRED INDIA TAROT – Queen Draupadi of Arrows is a wild dark huntress, like Diana in the west – a formidable encounter for any unprepared male. Note the snake around the sinuous tree. The publishers of the deck requested she wear pantaloons, respecting the conventions in contemporary Indian art; but here is the original drawing.

Sacred India Tarot – Queen Draupadi of Arrows

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Through the Royals in the Suit of Arrows, a shape-shifting occurs, as the animal kingdom – the animal soul – becomes integrated and uplifted into human consciousness.   Hanuman the Knight  embodies the simian intelligence, loyalty and strength – our ancient vital thread in the gene pool.

Garuda the King has an eagle’s face and wings.

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As a friend of mine wrote:  “the dung of the eagle flies higher than we do.  The dung of the ox falls deeper than we do.”  We ignore or disrespect our elder animal nature at our peril.  We know very little of our ancient Friend.  We try to make a pet of it.

In Pullman’s His Dark Materials, each human (rightly) was companioned by his or her animal daemon, furred or feathered:  our essential gravity..

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Rohit’s Notes (2004)  “I am prepared to go with Garuda instead of Yudhishtara (original choice).  The two Kings of the Air could be Garuda and Indra, both atmospheric AIR signs, which is after all the suit of arrows.  The illustrations depicting Garuda and Indra could be used as a base, though Indra should probably be shown in profile.

SITA visual reference from comic book – Indra & Garuda

Correspondence – Rohit “Gautam, we need a picture of a vajra, the thingie that is on top of our meditation bell.  I will try and bring pictures with me.  Do a search of Tibetan vajras on the net.  Garuda articles and the Garudra Indra picture from the comic we have scanned already so that is no problem.  Take a picture of your Garuda and send it to Jane.

Tibetan Vajra

 “Indra’s Vajra could be drawn in a somewhat Tibetan style.  Garuda could be shown conventionally, but the colours should be carefully maintained.  Golden body, white eagle face and blood red wings characterise him.  Indra can be clad in the white silver and blue to depict his role as Lord of the sky and winds and rain.

“I prefer to go with this option, because we get Indra who was after all a major player in the Vedic faith into the pack, and we also get Garuda in, and he is the ‘Michael’ archetype as seen by Indian eyes.”

Shape shifter – Eagle king 3. These shape shifters when I drew them, had an Egyptian archetype in mind, but serve as well to develop the concept of Garuda.

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From Rohit Arya’s Book with the Deck:  “Garuda the senior servant of Vishnu, and Hanuman the junior servant, are the strongest of the strong powers in the universe.  However, both these great beings have dedicated their lives to service instead of using their powers to rule over the cosmos … 

“Garuda the cosmic Eagle was the child of the rishi Kashyapa.  Between his mother Vinata and her co-wife Kadru, mother of serpents, there was sufficient bad blood and malice for Vinata to become Kadru’s slave.  To ransom her, Garuda undertook the forcible removal of amrit – elixir of immortality and source of the power of the devas.  This brought him into reluctant conflict with the Indra, King of the Devas.  Indra chose discretion as the better part of valour, and made an ally of Garuda, craftily blessing him with eternal rights over snakes as his food!

“Garuda’s strength is so megatherian, that one single feather of his wings can hold up a planet.  Behind the titanic roaring of his wings can be heard the eternal hymns of the Vedas.  His unblinking eyes denote his conquest of sleep, and his infallible gaze penetrates all.  His aura blazes like the fires of cosmic destruction.  Repeating his name thrice keeps snakes away at night … 

“In a reading:  Mentors and guides. Wise and knowledgeable about human nature.  Powerful analytical mind and … unexpected sense of humour.   More head than heart.  Intolerance of restrictions and conventionality … Good at romance, but it doesn’t interest him!  Values respect over likeability, knowledge over feelings, lofty ideals.  Fierce warriors if need be.

“Shadow:  Easily bored and mind scatters itself … Exaggerated lone-wolf attitudes – don’t involve me.  Fine judgement becomes judging others … the fearsome mind is a weapon used to wound.

“People would like you, even love you, if you gave them a chance.  Unbend and relax a little.  Sometimes the most intelligent thing may be to listen to your heart.”

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Durga shoots buffalo king Mahisha.

Among hunter communities of the Pandyan lands, whenever the community experienced hardships, they used to choose a young girl from among their clan, decorated her like Durga, and worshiped her as Mahishasura-mardhini, the one who killed Mahisha, the buffalo.  One of the decorative features of this girl was that an eye was painted on her forehead.  (Reference: http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/guest-blogger-jayasree-is-vedic.html )

I include this snippet, because the Eagle’s ascent through Garuda IS the opening of the third eye, as seen in the sketches and in the finished painting below.

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In the end, I chose to let Indra be Garuda’s “celestial background”.  Garuda is Master of the skies and Indra is the lightning flash.

SACRED INDIA TAROT – The King of Arrows:  Garuda is half an eagle. His human face is a double eagle, as in alchemy. The eagle’s vision flies as high as the serpents travel deep.

Guided by Indra’s Lightning, Garuda is a great ruler. He balances Planet Earth lightly on a feather, raises his arrow like the Queen of Justice in the west, and contains his Yogic ojas – the male seed. Before him, the Caducean pair of serpents rest on the ground, entwined.

Sacred India Tarot – King Garuda of Arrows

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Correspondence:  Gautam and Rohit to Jane – 2 March 2005 “Hi Jane, herewith Rohit’s feedback.  Warm regards, Gautam.”

“Gautam, the Garuda with the Indra looking over his shoulder is fantastic.  The Draupadi is very good too – as good – though she will need a dhoti-trouser instead of the mini she is currently wearing. Otherwise she will be confused with tribal Rakshasee Hidambas, mother of Ghatkolkacha, son of Bheema.  Like with Durga, the dhoti-trouser look is best, both authentic as well as uncontroversial.  Also, people will not buy a poster of a Draupadi in a mini skirt.  But the way she has been captured – this is the real Draupadi.  

“Fantastic cards.   Rohit.”

female golden eagle returns to nest. http://www.nickdunlop.com

I like to see this great Mother come back as she always does, to nest and feed her little King.  Garuda, Indra and Draupadi – may You go forth, and may our heart and eye and mind remain wide open to Your blessing and freedom.

Vedic Hymns to Indra

In the ascending slope of the mountains,
in the confluence of the streams,
by the Goddess-understanding the sage was born.

Hence being conscious at the summit
he looks down upon the sea
from which vibrating, he stirs.

Then they see the morning light
of the primordial seed when beyond Heaven
it is enkindled.

…

The imperious hawk, the song bird taking the stalk,
the joyous delight from the beyond, brought the Soma.
Godlike, the bird grasped it firmly,
which he had received from the highest heaven.

The hawk took the Soma he received
through a thousand times ten thousand effusions.
Thus the Goddess of bountiful intelligence abandoned the ungiving;
in the ecstasy of Soma she in wisdom
abandoned the foolish.

“The knowledge of the Self is the hawk or eagle, the bird of the Sun, the free spirit.  It carries the highest bliss, which it effuses infinitely.  The Goddess of bountiful intelligence is the consort or mind of Indra, our own soul that is released through this knowledge of the Divine I am, the I am All …”

Translation and commentary by David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) “Wisdom of the Ancient Seers” Motilal Banarssidas, Delhi, 1994)

Indra

The Sacred India Tarot Archive series in this blog will conclude with the Suit of Wands (Staves) – episodes from the Ramayana epic, including the crossing to Sri Lanka to liberate Sita from the demon Ravanna.

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      For other Sacred India Tarot posts, look under Recent Posts, Search, 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.

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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/