Philosopher Stone

Posted on September 27, 2019 by janeadamsart

20 September 2019

I woke to a Promethean poem this morning. Unfortunately it faded. I am left with the sense of a large almost-round grey pebble. The message within its fall to gravity was the fire. It is the fire. It was bonded with the flow of water. But water is flowing Stone. The water which flows as Stone contains the fire which falls to Earth; each day a fall of meteorites most of them incandescing to powder in the atmosphere – Air; these primordial processes prevail regardless of small human guilt.

The Stone is in my hand and its weight flies into the infinite core fractal of interior space, and inside each of Jim Ede’s pebbles is God. This is noticed through the anguished human claptrap.

Two realities reside here: one, that we humans spoil the earth, and the other: how can we so arrogantly presume to? It is in Gaia’s destiny to clear some of her surface areas for a time and alter the climate composition. As our Solar system moves deeper into the Photon belt, each organism is aware and agitated through changes in the DNA.

This is an unusual and Holistic idea. The substance or impression of Holistic ideas transcends – is greater than their composition. Their composition – how they print out – is subject to the interpretation: the words.

The substance, the dimensional weight falling through my body however – this is true, and it is what I call transmission, reception of the Promethean fire.

Let it do its work. Through countless receiving channels it is spelled out into this or that interpretation. Generally speaking there is agreement, that when we fully embrace and accept responsibility with our suffering, there is joy. There is unexpected, boundless joy, whatever appears to go on, or apparently engulfs it. Where one spark is covered for a time, another shines out. Watch a glowing fire in the hearth; it whispers along the wood like a slow snake.

Human beings need to suffer from their rattling thought and its environmental disorders, disasters and creation of deserts, in order to begin to step free from this convention mind – to work with and as Nature, Gaia, not against.

“To begin to” is the operative word here. Fixed holding-positions get left behind. Awaken into prayer and progress with the day, again and again and again and again; recreate the Power of Creation. An infinitesimal neutrino penetrates the leaden shield into the star; from star to star … again comes around the Promethean gift of Fire, the spark within each of us planted; the phoenix bird of song and light and joy in the recovery and resurrection: “I am the Resurrection and the Light.” “I am the love of the Light.” “I am the core of Love itself.” “Let there be Light.”

Coursing the sap in stem, nectar aflame,
each power to one beloved nadi clings.
The force through spine’s sushumna sings
‘All presence’, ‘Heart’s ocean’, ‘Swan of peace’, ‘Supreme’.*

As Her light pervades my body, I am detached;
my form as Self, Self and the world are matched

[ * – In one of my Ramana Gita sonnets, these are names roughly corresponding to atma nadi (Self), para nadi (that which is beyond manifestation) and amrita nadi (nectar of immortality) in the text. The nadis are the meridian map within the Yogic body.]

phoenix bird of fire

The alchemist blows a little on the banked fire, and it glows. The breath. The body.

In a stone-age cave, the warming flame flows along the log like lava, like water with Light which is air and the Earth’s solar core. Everything, each and every phenomenon has this potential (See the link to “beyondhumanstories” further down this post) … within the plastics and perverted materials, nothing is other than the core. Sooner or later it returns to the core, as technologies arise to biodegrade our unconscious waste, for we become conscious, first individually here and there, and then collectively as a tide through tipping-point. Alchemists are able to quicken the interior process, and to see above the tide. Wherever an alchemist is at work, the environment blossoms. Alchemists are gardeners. We potter and we ponder and we fish.

The slow fire along the log burns out old Karma and all its fascination and even beauty. It cleanses the slate, to the horror and grief of all who saw and were aware of, for instance, the burning of the Amazon forest. A cruel human may have caused it or encouraged it to spread; but it was to be. It shocks and burns the soul. It starves further the respiration’s resources. The respiration is the whole planetary balance and swirl of currencies and weathers. Why is this happening?

I think the new human will have, and has already a bond with nature, with creature, fish, plant, tree and rock which we used to plunder and exploit and harm. The new human is so deeply, painfully connected with what she harmed that she plays into the restorative power of transmutation and the burgeoning of Life. Humankind is no longer separate from the forest and creatures of the field, no longer separate from the seas, no longer a player of golf.

The new human re-learns the ancient unifying magic; the art begins where nature ceases to act. Already this is developing as a fact. Those who despaired and yet were willing to hope, drop away from the old system. They begin to work with the Sun, creating local solar technologies. They nurture the family and patterns of relationships. Relationships are geometries and sacred forms and problems of harmony. With the ripple effect, they enter and inspire one another.

A drawing from Douglas Harding’s ‘Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth’

I wanted to say … concentric waves or ripples. Where the Stone falls and breaks surface, there is a centrifugal ripple: concentric rings. These move subtly through immediate society and communities, creating further impacts and their rings. Watch a fall of rain on the pond. I don’t publish 99% of my work because it could be misunderstood. I am not totally sure of it myself, or of peoples’ capacity to misinterpret and to twist. The Stone goes on and on falling into my fractal core and there is no time to stop and buff it up into shape to pass through the gate; for always it comes. I trust that where I work, the Companions of the Light take care of it. Their power to reach the ground and to start a wave passes through where I sit and write it down, and travels to other antennae. I write the same thing over and over and over for the telegraph wire. I’m a starling sitting on it. There is never enough of it. I write and sing so others unseen are inspired. There are notes that travel above and below the standard spectrum; the invisible octaves of the ground of being.

Starling & murmuration – Image from allaboutbirds

While I was cleaning the house upstairs yesterday, Genevieve’s conversation with Paula Aamli (https://beyondhumanstories.com/podcast-hope-beyond-hope/?fbclid=IwAR3SX5Z8FWTfCgpMmcSayAIQghOQgphJJaq4Mx8c394Ey4X80_e4Yht4Pz8 uplifted and helped me to turn to face my pain; for Paula discovered – through facing hers – that though the present human engine is destroying its future, there is an unexpected response of joy, gratitude, discovery and noticing the infinite resource of life even in a walled in city garden, and certainly within the soul’s courage. There is more to this than we know.

It is the infinitesimal fractal potency of the small! The 9^thGene key is called the Power of the Infinitesimal. Beauty is the story, the dimension which cuts through every science.

Brancusi’s Prometheus on Bechstein, Kettle’s Yard

I was told long ago, in 1969: Your beautiful thoughts are not enough. The stuff of beauty is sterner. The way is to evoke and inspire that beauty in someone else. Ah, but I see today, the beautiful thoughts are, and create the Way. The beauty didn’t come into my hand like soap. It had to be worked for, leaned into and with, discovered, suffered, recreated.

The new chapter is respirational, back and forth, in and out. When the old breath is done it dulls and expires: the new breath coming in underneath it be-stirs things. So rises and falls the Tao in our world.

When I woke this morning with the Promethean poem I lay for a while listening to the hammering builders who’ve taken off a roof, up the road. I could just hear the dark yammer of their radio. Listening to radio news and watching media is a yammering, de-sensitising skin which most of us wear. It reinforces the screen of isn’t it all dreadful and bad, and it deadens the feeling. Journalists are able to witness and report horrors with this leaden blanket. I don’t have that protective numbness. The Guardians force me in this way to stay sensitive. I don’t read the papers or watch the media. My ear is to the ground; I pick up what I need to know. The human commentary on atrocity and damage and guilt, is more than I can bear. Many of us walk with only one side of our bodies and half of our brains and heavy clouds in our heart and loins. I used to have dreams about only being able to walk with one foot, the other was tightly curled up asleep underneath.

The Tarot key that intuitively blossoms today is the 8^th– Soul strength, the woman guiding the lion to sing and to speak. “Make your pattern accurate, profound, honest, courageous.”

It is another such beautiful September day, this morning, sharp and fresh. Water, stone, meteorite – recollect that vast numbers of comets and meteorites and cosmic bodies are petrified water. Water of Life.

The Stone warms up to flow as water with the fire inside.

Click on image to view

Ben’s roof

Ben building house

Cosmographic volume, after Kepler

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. See also Aquariel

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2019. 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/

Sketches of Pallas Athene

Posted on January 28, 2017 by janeadamsart

Athene was the Greek warrior goddess. She might correspond to India’s Durga. Her magnificent grey eyes were filled with light; she came across the seas, larger than life, to inspire Perseus and other heroes on their dangerous odyssey. She lent them her weapons, her bearskin and Hermes’ gold sandals and cloak of invisibility. Her creature is the Owl. May her wisdom be our courage.

When I was a child, reading Charles Kingsley’s The Heroes, I copied out my favourite pages from the tale of Perseus and the Gorgon – how we face our shadow – and illustrated them. Botticelli’s allegorical painting of Pallas Athene and the troubled man who is half a horse, puzzled me.

I had last year in the back of my mind’s eye, Athene’s face as she strokes the centaur’s head. When I was small, my grandmother must have told me the story, because always since then, I hear her crisp voice explaining this picture, perhaps she talked to me about the shield and the bearskin and the centaur and the spear. Later, I learned to read. An archetype behind my grandmother’s presence – the true picture (like a Botticelli or Leonardo) -transcends the suggestive physical form. The Presence of that art stood subtly behind Helen Ede’s face, her flavour and her voice.

Each child has a special feeling for her grandmother perhaps. This is my own.

4-botticellis-atheneaphrodite-centaur

The painting by Sandro Botticelli

One of my versions, in 1987. I too was on my inner journey …

… to mend my dolls.

5-centaur-athene-child

I set forth into life, with Athene’s blessing and Hermes’ sandals

6-a-lesson-with-owl

Do I learn from books, or do I really look and see? Wake up!

Here are Ceres and John, the deep unfolding bud within Revelation.

9-drawing-of-centaur-athene-after-botticelli

When I did this drawing – copying Botticelli’s – towards the end of last year, the allegory or mystery within it came up to the touch. She seems to raise the human animal body with all its memory and mythos, through levels of awakening: they behold one another, astonished. I particularly enjoyed drawing the centaur.

It was very difficult for me to draw Athene. When she at long last began to look like a goddess (not Botticelli’s look-like, but in her own right) I became deeply interested in the Centaur. With him, the painting’s archetypal resonance emerges. He is the daemon, the living creature of the woods: his face is twisted like a root: he is as we were when the Spirit world still shone through our irregular features – a tall, noble, careworn personage, Cheiron who guided the Argonauts from his cave on Mount Pelion. In the original Botticelli, he looks tall and spacious, but when I try to draw him, I discover his horse-body is a Shetland pony – short legs and haunches at the level of Athene’s knees. So his distortion and its strange natural beauty in the Botticelli is curious: the man body is long and powerful: the horse body small and sturdy.

Try to imagine him here in this room: great Devic man of the woods on a little Sheltie’s short legs which (relatively) scuttle him along like a small dog.

I always imagined Centaurs as the proud neck of great stallions who leap fallen trees and rocks effortlessly, read the stars and regard bipeds with disdain. This one’s human body is outsize. Athene in my drawing is super-human size, she has very big feet. She is a goddess. I used to love the leaves and flowers on her shining dress. Her face was rather grown up and sorrowful. In my rendering, it is sensual like a female Pan, an awakened child, a bit like Botticelli’s earthy angels. She gazes wonderingly at the Centaur creature whose dark locks of hair she strokes – in my drawing she might pull his hair, gently draw him up to her height, to be seen. She seems to unmask nature. Her presence and touch lifts him from small pony body (or cart-horse) to the godlike stature of human, and still he is uncoiling from his shy woodland state: he shields himself like Adam and Eve: he twists like an old tree. His eyes and consciousness do not know what or Who this is, that lifts, shines and troubles him.

The allegory is now clear to me. Like the Birth of Aphrodite, it is another portrait of Renaissance in the collective soul-body at the time. I am fascinated by his daemon woodiness and the idea that in any sylvan glade in the woods, these two might emerge through transpositions of the light.

In the painting they are on the shore of a lake by a temple; in the distance behind them sails a little boat. In my mind’s eye they are deep in the woods, among the trees. My early impress of childhood awakens to a transformed sound: as I began to draw the Centaur, I heard and felt the ‘quickening’ in my body. It is easier and a relief to draw his battered face than to try to represent a Botticelli beauty … I had a long struggle with her. He is of the curled roots and loamy sharp smells of the woods. Pan-like, he gives me his energy.

Like when I copied Botticelli’s Primavera Mercury some years ago, I understand God’s ‘twist’ and brush-stroke in our design, which we endure: body’s spiral movement – face’s anxious uplift – essential in the overall design to support it like a pillar, like Atlas.

Mercury – Hermes – copy after Botticelli’s Primavera

A week or two later, I did the same drawing, this time with my left hand. Why? Because my left hand – the surfacing subconscious or feminine, has not yet acquired bad habits. It is less facile, so it is aware. The lines come from within, slow, sensitive and deliberate, I seem to see where they should go. I didn’t have to erase much.

Centaur and Athene after Botticelli – drawn with left hand

Athene herself looks amazed at what she uncovers. It is related to her allegories of unmasking with Perseus and the Gorgon, and to my feeling with this drawing. Her shield and bears-head and owl are not visible, but all are implied in her raising of the Centaur to the light. In my right-hand version, there wasn’t much room on the paper to draw her big axe-head on the staff she holds, and there was no room at all for the Centaur’s bow.

Centaurs are the Sagittarian Archer. Traditionally the Sags are small, dark and lithe, and swift with their arrows which travel far … until they reach the Saturn field of Capricorn. In winter there is this tidal pressure and restraint: centrifugue and centripetal movement, Jupiter and Saturn across the Tree: winter.

Aphrodite comes ashore with shadow.

Hear the sea. Walk in the sand.

Copy of Sandro Botticelli’s self-portrait detail from “Adoration of the Virgin”

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.

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2017. 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/

Resurrect the Star

Posted on January 7, 2017 by janeadamsart

Tarot Keys Tower, Star and Moon, representing the paths on the Tree which converge on Netzach

These three Tarots tell me a story: the cracking of the seedcase, the watering of the shoot, the evolutionary journey to ripen. When the Tower falls, it reveals its inversion, a well.

I was thinking along the archetypal lines of 2016, 2017 … and today brought a link to a colour meditation on the same theme, which feels timely:
http://colourconscious.com/aura-soma/2017-a-year-for-the-star/ … “By listening to our star and living our truth we take responsibility for the only part that is truly in our hands …” (Dominic Yeoman)

The ‘Philosophus’ chapter in Paul Foster Case’s The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order offers 6 keys for lovers of wisdom to contemplate further: Death, Star, Chariot … Temperance, World, Sun children.

Sextet arrangement: tarot philosophus 7.1.17

Arranged here in a six pointed star – the Seal of Solomon – is a visual analogy that natural man is the seed-case of the spiritual man. I’m a dull stick these days. “Philosophus” means cultivating clarity, and the word is derived from Philo Sofia – lover of wisdom … “who might be compared to a man who has learned to read the architect’s plans. The house is yet to build.”

What is clarity? Clarity is a process of alignment, perhaps a desire to contribute to a positive humanity, a collective Lighthouse.

Lighthouse by my brother Simon, circa 1965

This morning I seemed to be mouldering in a puddle – recovering from seasonal flu. Then I thought of the Lighthouse: a reflective focus. Its shaft, its beam, penetrates the ocean depth and crosses the sea. If I focus on that and give it time, my thought moves from fog into ‘precision tools’, into the quickening of community. As I open into interior silence, I wait: have faith: give it space. The lenses above and below, converge.

click on image to view

Lighthouse under water by Tony Wigg 2016

sketch of alfred wallis 2016

lighthouse with golden birds 2016

The lighthouse shaft underwater, releases a flow of strength. Pictures are resurrected, taking on vibrance and meaning. “May God be resurrected and his foes perish … (Psalms). As wax melts before the flame, as smoke is driven by the wind …”

RESURRECT … and my dark sloth slithers off the branch. There is a golden sound now in the Archangel pouring quintessential water and fire onto muddy Leo and Scorpio creatures … beneath the shadow of his iridescent wings and rainbow … dipping his toe in the bottomless brook: “Guidance is not a mere article of faith. It is a matter of daily personal experience.”

When it connects, it feels like scales dropping off as the Sun dawns. There is a beautiful enigma with the androgyne who dances within the laurel of the World, and with the Children in their field: they sparkle through the dew. The smiling sunflowers all (except one – ) turn their faces to the children – the Seed of the Sun. One sunflower-head watches the Sun, for form’s sake. The childrens’ whole sexuality is in bud. My fields are irrigated with the golden flow of their joy. The world is darkened, but so is the closed interior of the unbroken seed. The seed breaks into halves and into children.

In a nutshell, duties to life and community are perceived in a flash, which take time, labour and obscurity to realise.

The dawn comes. I have to approach it again and again and again. To repeat by turning back the page to see what I wrote before – or what anyone else wrote – is not sufficient. The key is turned afresh, to enlighten. I have no illusions the enlightenment will last but it doesn’t matter: it will come again. The Oracle never clones itself.

Child and Grandmother, 2016

The other 3 Keys (in the sextet above, in this post) are Death, the Star and the Chariot. Death scythes the fertile ground. The Star waters it. The Chariot stands like a hyacinth or … a lighthouse with its keeper inside.

Go into the lamp room with its lenses and reflectors. It is simple. Light a candle, light my fire and let it travel across the sea. Light it with a match or knock a spark from two flints. The spark is within the stone (I wrote snow), like the flame within the wood, the cream within milk, the Upanishad. The spark is Netzach on the Tree, the mating game … only connect.

Netzach, Hod, Temperance on the Tree

In the hells on earth, there are gleams here and there, which give an individual some strength to carry his child or to care for another; persons leave their homes and go out into the thick of it. The manna is directed into the core of Hope in the human seed.

What is the Star of Hope? Hope is not an abstract. Hope is the capacity to transfigure a dark situation into a light one. Hope illumines the dark and turgid, and dispels hatred and fear. One moment I am dead. The next moment I am alive and kicking. This is Hope.

This is what is meant by the Star … the star the Magi followed. Hope is an irrigation, converting desert into orchard and oasis. It can begin nowhere else but here.

Elisa & Mary in Iona – 2016

My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

Sacred India Tarot Archive – Page(s) of Staves: The Ashwins

Posted on November 17, 2015 by janeadamsart

”

Buddha, 2008

This post contains Rohit Arya’s inspiring reflection on the Ashwins. Through last week’s dark events in Paris which bring close to home, hearth and empathy, the shocking daily reality in many lands, I got some uplift with his writing, and I hope so do you.

Ashwin gentlemen

Rohit’s Notes (2003)

“I have searched diligently for any sort of artistic representation of the divine twins and failed. It is a disgrace actually, that no such representations exist. The attached article will convey the feel and tenor of the solar twins. We are breaking fresh ground here, the first representation of the Ashwinis. The story of the Rishi floating on the log and thus saved from Cosmic Flood by the Ashwinis could give us our link with wands.”

Ashwini Kumara – the Swift Gods of Light –
From an earlier Article by Rohit Arya

“The Ashwini twins are Vedic gods who were once held in high esteem but have been all but forgotten. They were however, the prototype for the notion of Kumara the eternal youth, which is how both Skanda and the Buddha would be represented in future sculpture.

“It is known to a few, that the Awhwinis were the first physicians, doctors to humanity as well as the gods. They were one of many Solar deities in the Vedas; many of their attributes were taken over by Vishnu when his cult by a process of osmosis, engulfed all the solar gods in his vast embrace.

“The Ashwinis seem to be the most energetically joyful of all the gods known to man. They hurtle through the cosmos in a dizzying effervescence of joy. They are the lords of speed, the swift rivers, the falcons of light, the riders of the fleet horse, agile and brilliant as Rig Veda says. Speed is their keynote. They bounce off the walls of heaven with a rush of energy, like young colts. They are the most dazzlingly handsome personages in the universe, and they know it – ‘swift footed lords of bliss, much enjoying’. Later stories would elaborate on them as sensual gods. In some versions they marry jointly, Savitri the daughter of Surya the Sun God. She was nominally supposed to marry Soma, lord of the moon and the sacred drink, but the Ashwins were much more handsome and cut a spectacular dash! Other myths tell that they married the ten rays of the Sun, Surya’s daughters … But they had no time to lech like other gods. Savitri was the only one who could keep up with their rapidity.

Sukra – the Jyotish deity Venus. This illustration is in Andrew Foss’s new book on Vedic astrology, Yoga of the Planets (out soon).

“The Ashwins were not effete dandies, careering across the cosmos in solar powered Ferraris. They were that rarest of heroes, intellectuals who could act decisively and swiftly. They were described as ‘effectual in action, the powers of movement, fierce-moving in their paths: they embodied the Samurai dictum – ‘to think and to act are one and the same‘. They are the power of movement itself, so speedy and firm were they perceived to be. They used their great knowledge to help the gods – which was appreciated – and also to alleviate the sufferings of Humanity – which was not. Like Prometheus they had to face an angry Indra, leader of the gods, who punished them by depriving them of the right to drink the sacred Soma, which conferred strength and immortality on the gods. Soma was only too pleased; they had cost him a wife. However, the angry gods could not punish the Ashwins – they moved too fast to be caught, and they were no pushovers. Nobody knew the extent of their strength, nor wished to risk finding out.

Red horse by the sea, 2008

“The Ashwins did not care too much about being excluded from the sacred drink. They were caught up in their experiments and always on the move, as an active life principle. They made an iron leg for the warrior named Vispala who lost his in battle. They were physicians and worked tirelessly at their craft. The jealous humans said they had forfeited divine honours by associating too much with humans! In later medieval times, the physician’s job was regarded as greatly polluting as it interfered with the evil Karma which produced the disease – a cruel doctrine. It is greatly to the Ashwins’ credit that they chose compassion over the approbation of their fellows, and continued to do what they had always done. They healed countless numbers of the lame, and restored sight to many who were blind – an apt action for the Lords of the Light. The similarities with events in Palestine many thousands of years later are also obvious. One of the Ashwins’ most coveted boons was to restore youth and vigour to the aged and decrepit. That might explain why they did not need the Soma like the other gods did.

“The Rishi Chyavana was old, feeble and ugly. Constant immersion in meditation had covered his body with vegetation until an anthill arose around him. The beautiful Sukanya thought his still visible eyes were glow-worms and poked them out with a stick, to capture them. Instantly the people of that region were cursed with terrible pain; the only way out of this was to marry her off to the sage she had wronged. Sukanya accepted the grotesque situation as being fair – the blind sage needed someone to care for him. One day however, at the riverbank (a liminal, threshold site) Sukanya observed the Ashwinis frolicking in the water, and sighed for her lack of such joys.

“The Twins had a rare moment of lust, and propositioned her, confident in their youth and beauty. But she rebuked them severely and abashed them. Yet they still had their hats in the ring, and offered to cure her husband of blindness and senility, and give him a handsome form like their own. This was the catch: she must pick out her husband correctly from the identical trio, or agree to go with them. Sukanya consulted her husband who decided to teach the presumptuous gods that he may be old and blind, but did not become a rishi for nothing. When they emerged from the water in which the gods dipped the old man, she instantly recognised her husband through his instructions; the gods do not blink, sweat, cast shadows or leave footprints – and the human was easily found out.

Secret dakini oracle 42, Wave of Bliss. Note the longboat under the crest.

“The Twins were sporting about it, and Chyavana, grateful for his rejuvenation, instructed them in an esoteric part of the Vedic sacrifice that even the gods had forgotten. Armed with this new knowledge, the Ashwinis marched back into the divine company and traded off the right to drink Soma for this new rite in the fire sacrifice. They came full circle – rejected for their love of humanity and restored by it too.

“Some have mistakenly translated their name to be Horsemen, from Ashwa the horse they ride. The horse as a symbol of prana indicates the Ashwinis’ perfect control over the breath, as well as their dazzling speed. The word Ashwini is derived from a root word which means ‘to fill everything’. One of the twins pervades the universe with Light, the other with Moisture – another indication that they were proto-Vishnu, ‘he that pervades’.

(Diagrams of solar-fusion which is set to replace nuclear fission by 2050 as our main energy source, and could totally revolutionise the human world-view and society, See this link: https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/perhaps-fission-is-the-learning-curve-to-fusion/

“In another story, they rescued a great sage from a flood that threatened to drown his learned life. The Ashwins sent him a log to clamber up onto and float around until realising who was responsible for this providential intervention. Then they appeared before him, blessed him and instructed him in spiritual matters.

big wave near Marloes, west Wales

“The Twins were heralds of the dawn, lords of the fleetingly transient state between night and dawn, again an attribute of their great speed. This places them firmly as liminal or threshold deities, guardians of sacred and rare times when higher levels of consciousness may be accessed. This peculiar aspect of their potency is acknowledged in verses where the Ashwinis are addressed as the children of the sun, of the earth, of the waters, and even as sons of the submarine fire. All are conjunctions, especially the horizon where one space interacts with another, forming a natural threshold, and are key areas for the Ashwini to act. They are the great facilitators of transition, but only to the Light. They simply do not have the time for anything else.

They give that impelling energy for the great work which, having for its nature and substance the light of the Truth, carries man beyond the darkness.

“The Ashwinis represent a glorious phase of Indian culture, and there are very few gods who are so reverberant with light. They are action incarnate, joyful graspers of life and laughter, quick to act and determined in their courses, intelligent and compassionate. The thrill they get out of being alive, is magnificent; it is a great pity that India has lost the ability to be in sympathy with such an exultant use of talent, ability and power. This is life lived to the fullest, to delight in action and glory in the mind … ‘Take joy in the Word, the holders in the intellect, by the luminously energetic thought’ …

http://www.ludgerphilips.org/gallery/images-of-synthesis/aries-the-fire-of-life

“It was a sad time when India forsook the speedy gods of Light for more sedate worship.

“In the Vedic constellations, the Ashwins are in Aries, the sign of the New.

“In a reading: Light: Creative beginnings – difficult to pin down – potent card for spiritual breakthroughs. Shift to higher, more spiritual approaches to life … Honest and straight-forward talkers … Always shooting off in a new direction, may need restraint. Enthusiastic team worker, but may not always follow team policy. Lots of travel indicated.
Shadow: Instability and misdirected energy … ominously they can become passionate followers of dubious leaders, the hitler-youth sort of personality, fall into trances of admiration for peculiar people and weird ideas.
This is the moment to stay on track, not veer off to interesting sidelights.”

From Rohit’s book with the deck

Sacred India Tarot – Pages of Staves: The Ashwis

Rohit’s feedback to the Card, 2003: “My enthusiasm for the Ashwins is unbounded. I cannot recall feeling so excited about something. No change at all.”

wave yantra pattern

From Jane’s Journal/channeling in October 2003:

“Last night while watching The Omen on TV, I drew for IndiaTarot the Ashwini Kumara from Solar Joy upon a foaming white horse of the wave. They reach down a great white arm to the struggling sage of humankind adrift with his log at sea whose arm is feebly raised, like that of a baby. The Lord Sustainer Sanatkumar out of Vishnu’s endless dharma comes swift with the dawn and gathers him. The Lord Sustainer Sanatkumar overtakes the destiny of the rolling log, with that of the cosmic Law.

“In the Psalms and Songs of David, uplift from wickedness is eternal throughout the many forgotten races of man. The rod and staff built into our infancy in the cosmic deep brings us through, again and again, until our own IAM is that: the Arm of the Psalm.

“… What requires completion will be done, be assured, and it is a waste of time and energy to attempt what is assigned to other time and place. Have confidence in the work. Service to the Hierarchy enlarges access by guided acceleration, and guarantees clear sighted fulfilment. See the Horse of the Ashwins, whose heavenly wave pearls and takes along with it the surfing Wand. Be not afraid. Surf the Father/Mother, surf the Son: surf I Am – be this your AIM! IAM AEOLIAN and I play your strings. IAM your wind, the Hebrew H or wind-door. Why AMI this? because you love what IAM.

“Symbols are patterns of vibration, like the Chladni figure on a glass, like the sand on the beach patterning the waves. They are not abstract, they are representations as concrete as anything you believe in the material world. … Every part and atom of the teaching is an actual jewel, a vein of rock, a garment, a body, a breath, a blessing. Sacred geometry is representational … the shoulder blades, the wings of your ageless archetype.”

Jane’s Notes Today 2015

Rohit’s “speedy gods of Light”! Indeed, our “sedate forms of worship” in the world when they become sad and constraining, can lead to cancerous affiliations.

What is the worship? Perhaps a spontaneous response to the miraculous mystery of our life and being. Self-importance collapses in such moments, forgetting what it had to say. There is a deep human need for ritual and ‘the music’: to come close. When the heart is deeply moved it likes a little ceremony.

The Sanskrit for the worship or spiritual instruction is “upadesa” – to draw near. We bring to the worship our infinite variety of needs and archetypes. I was never able to establish a regular habit of prayer or meditation, but I respect those who do. Spontaneous offerings arising within the soul – sometimes wisely and sometimes unwisely – are my worship and my daily bread, through raincloud, sun and winter.

Worship may be a steady practice, or it may fountain, touching base in synagogue, cathedral, temple or on prayer mat alike. The paradox of worship is that it is a deeply private and yet communal power. When inflated with politics and unbalanced accumulations of wealth, it gets trapped into every extremity which human nature is capable of, and is lost.

What can I do with my values? Change starts here at history’s crossroads, in us each as individuals through our deltas of extended family. Change begins within each atom, and imperceptibly at first, begins to overcome the molecular infrastructures. The political leaders cannot do it, for they are locked within the competing forms. It is my responsibility and yours, to live what we are given.

For me, the wonder in the Ashwins is: the weakened sailor moves his subconscious left arm by an effort of will – and to it descends in joy and glory the Will – the powerful helping hand of the divine Solar Twins. We are so much more than we think we know.

Horses by the sea in west Wales, 2007

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.

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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 – Creation of Seven and Eight of Wands

Posted on August 26, 2015 by janeadamsart

Sacred India Tarot – Seven of Staves/Wands – Sita through the fire

Sacred India Tarot eight of wands, Vimaha flight

Continuing this series on the Sacred India Tarot published by Yogi Impressions in November 2011.

The suit of Wands or Staves contain the soul of Agni, the sacred fire – where more so than in these two cards of destiny?

Their story is: in the Seven of Staves, Sita the distrusted bride immerses herself in the flame which is purity itself; in the Eight, she is liberated with her beloved as the Karmic bonds are released. Who among us has not felt scorched with self doubt and then seen the skies open as life becomes simple again?

As Rohit has pointed out, the eight of each suit is an ‘end of Karma card’. Then the seven of each suit portrays a matter of doubt: a threshold through which the Dharma moves. If I look through the four suits, each “seven” portrays an inward gesture or vulnerability to purify, and each ‘eight’ clears the slate. I was not aware of this when I painted them. It was Rohit’s work to perceive the archetypes and their speech, and to email to me, brief suggestions or pointers. When I received these, the primary images took over and flowed, surprising both of us many a time. The deck has an elder Vedic soul. It is contacted and released through creative concentration. Thus the deck provides us with an astute psychological mirror.

Sequentially in the story, Sita tested herself through the flame after her safe return with Rama to India – but in the Mahabharatha as in other great epics, time is not linear but visionary. Hearing bad council, Rama would suspect her of enforced infidelity with Ravana the King of Asuras he had rescued her from, and they suffered a second isolation from each other while this was sorted out. Psychologically a man’s union with his inner beloved can be as fickle as the sea – especially when he believes he should stand alone. In the female psyche, this is mirrored. In all of us the male and female interact – animus and anima – and set up mutual obstacles.

The suit of Wands/Staves denotes the play of sacred weapons; the higher transformation of war games into the martial arts.

The tragedy implicit in the Seventh card, is the old, old story: the woman is targeted. Many of us bear this redemptive burden down the centuries. Is it any wonder when we feel inexplicably tired?

Rohit’s Notes to Jane, 2003
“Card Seven is Sita Agni Parikasha – courage – she asks for it.

“It should be easy enough to show the fire ordeal she goes through to prove her innocence as seven logs of burning wood from which she emerges, held up by Agni lord of fire. The 3 illustrations given should be of some help. This is a dynamic and dramatic card, as everyone except Rama was appalled at what was happening.”

Visual reference for Seven of Wands/Staves

From Rohit’s Book with the Deck
“Sita’s Trial by Fire. Sita has been rescued. In the ensuing celebrations over this fact, as well as Ravana’s death, one awful unspoken question hovers raptor-like over the minds of all. Did Ravana forcibly molest her or did he not? … Rama knows there will never be any end to insinuation, slander and malice if this is not tackled expeditiously. So he harrows Sita by giving voice to the collective suspicion – ‘Ravana could never have been so self-controlled.’

“Sita is outraged and furious. In popular Indian imagination, Sita is all that is meek, timid and subservient to a husband. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Sita of Valmiki’s Ramayana is a fire-brand intellectual, outspoken and fearless, and she is not going to tolerate sniggering speculation about her virtue. She upbraids Rama for daring to speak so – the fault if any is in the abductor, not the woman.

Visual reference – Ravana king of Asuras abducts Sita

“Provoked beyond endurance, Sita orders Laxmana to arrange a funeral pyre for her, as a life without dignity is worthless. As the appalled audience watches this awe inspiring act of courage – a living Sita seated amidst flames – the gods intervene. Agni god of fire rises from the flames with an unscathed Sita, and remonstrates with Rama for his conduct. Rama wryly admits he manipulated matters thus, so that a public and miraculous vindication of Sita would silence all loose talk forever. The issue is resolved – for now.

“Interpretation of the card: Courage, decisive battle, defiance and reliance on the self. Inner resources and resilience. Do not back away. Inner battles especially over ethical issues and temptation – perseverance through adversity: taking responsibility. Refusal to be intimidated or manipulated into restrictive roles. Able to say ‘No’ without guilt.

“Shadow – this can also be the card of the excuse maker – fatigue and fear of loss – giving in to others’ wishes – neglected talent. Fear of failure or of being thought incompetent. What do you really need to take a stand about, or what are you shirking from? Are your values important, or ‘being liked’? Clean up any clutter at home.”

Sacred India Tarot – Seven of Staves/Wands – Sita through the fire

Jane’s Notes:

Behind Sita, Agni the deity of the sacred fire seems to breathe on her gently like a bellows – to raise the power of the pure and liberating flame within her: to open her wings of prana in the chrysalis. In the next card she is the Shakti: she flies.

In alchemical traditions, the transformative agent is the secret fire with the breath: the cooking: the warmth of the hen’s breast to hatch the egg.

I feel this suit thematically signifies woman’s truth and male doubt when he does not listen. We are both masculine and feminine. The creative combat of intuitive wisdom and the rational mind is played out daily within our psyche.

Rohit’s Feedback – “The Seven – Sita in the flames with Agni – This is a superb card, mystical and melancholic, and the Agni is a very unusual interpretation of the god of fire. Perhaps the outlines of the seven wands need to be slightly stronger but in all other aspects it is beautiful. Most seven of wands are all about a huffing and puffing macho sort of courage, but this is courage with dignity and grace. Sita is absolutely wonderful.”

Rohit did not send me a visual reference for the Pushpaka-Vimana, though he mentioned a ‘sculptural panel’, and that it is a conscious vehicle. Here is a link to an article about the vimanas or devic chariots that cut through time and space.

The above article on https://ancientaliens.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/vimanas is fascinating, reminding me of dreams I had in which I built a flying machine whose “engine” was fuelled by balance and intention. The archetype is deep within us, and in “His Dark Materials” Philip Pullman describes an Intention Craft which rises vertically, descends, hovers and travels laterally as thought – a remarkable depiction of the body of light in the western occult tradition.

Correspondence 2003 – Jane to Gautam (publisher) and Rohit (author)
(for Card 9 and the court cards, see next SITA posts)
“Dear Gautam – I do not understand your picture references for Cards 8 and 9. 8 should be the Vimana flight home to Ayodhya, and 9 should be Rama’s agony at banishing Sita; but the pictures you gave are of Sita being abducted and Jatayu fighting Rama, both marked 8. Please clarify.

“For the court cards, which documents are the photos of yourself and Rohit attached to? I do not have the Skanda document you refer to, or the photos! Regards, Jane.”

“Dear Jane, please find below, comments of Rohit: ‘We do not have the exact visual reference for either of these cards, as neither in painting nor sculpture have the two incidents been clearly depicted. The two pictures marked 8 have been provided to convey the impression of flight. They are just triggers for the events to be depicted in card 8, they do not illustrate.

‘For card number 9, there is no reference as such, as the event is both touchy and controversial in India and avoided by artists. Please tell Jane she has free rein to depict it in any manner she chooses.’

“I will send our pictures via email. Warm regards, Gautam.”

Rohit’s Notes 22 September 2003 – Eight of Wands/Staves
“The Pushpaka-Vimana flight back home to Ayodhya (representing swiftness) – The Pushpaka Vimana was supposed to be composed of flowers or flower-bedecked, in blooms that would never fade. It was an airplane of sorts, and there is a bewildering paragraph in the Valmiki Ramayana where Sita asks Rama why the stars are visible from the vimama, even though it is day.

“The answer given is that at such elevation the light of the sun fails, and we see the stars which are always present in the sky! What we perhaps need is a feeling of flying over the ocean, or alternatively we could show the vimana flying over Ayohdhya which too is a spectacular city. I like the touch in the sculptural panel of showing the vimana as an embodied form; according to the texts, the vimana had consciousness and was a genuine personality in its own right. The eight wands could perhaps be poles on the vimana like some sort of flying pavilion?

Sacred India Tarot eight of Wands – Vimana flight, Rama and Sita

This image also depicts the power of the Mantric vehicle: the way sound travels through all dimensions. See my earlier posts on Ganapati Muni’s Guru Mantra Bhashya – “Om Vacadhbuve Namaha“.

This link (below) is not strictly speaking related to the content of this post; it arises intuitively because I began this week to learn the Gayatri and other mantras and to chant them at odd times during the day – in the street, on the bus, or wherever. Wonderfully, they clear the weather! The science of mantra fascinates me, and so does the warm and ancient Vedic vibration. My Indian roots are deep.

All powers seek the one who does not slip out from the state of wisdom. They come naturally for the Jnani is omnipotent , whether he shows the powers openly, impelled by momentum of karma, or imperceptibly but surely by his very presence.

Source: Sri Ramana Gita by Ganapati Muni

Om Vacadbhuve Namah
Om Namo Bhagavate Sri Ramanaya’

With the energy in this Karma-clearing card, 8 of Staves, I see the principle not only in mantra and sound and healing, but in the quality of relationships and what we try to communicate to one another.

From Journal, September 2003 – “I began Eight of Wands yesterday. I have not drawn an oriental vehicle, but a living Being, an outlined gandharva or angel, in whose lap Sita and Rama are transported across the sea to their home. I realised while on this, that what is happening in the world today, is the same as in the Ramayana or the Bhagavad Gita. A vast mythological archetype is in action, destroying the father of lies again. Be gold, go bold, and seize and receive this actual perception. It trembles truth.”

Rohit’s Feedback 10 December 2003 – “The Eight is the most original interpretation of the pushpaka I have yet seen. It conveys that Hanuman carrying Rama subtext as well as showing the swift flight back home.”

sun yantra

From Rohit’s Book with the Deck:

“… The trip from Lanka in the time left, is feasible only by Pushpak Vimara, a flying craft seized by Rama from Kubera, god of wealth. This machine was a curious mixture of science and magic, having human form as well as being a wood and metal craft capable of expanding infinitely, with aisles and window seats! Its fuel was kept in vats on flight, and was an amalgam of wine, honey, mercury and herbal concoctions – a veritable environmentalist’s dream!

“The aerial route described in the Ramayana is similar to the now defunct Colombo to Allahabad air service. It took nine hours to make the trip to Ayodhya, so the speed was quite good if not spectacular … Ancient Indians were fabulous astronomers, and there is nothing peculiar in Rama’s knowledge when he answers Sita that at such heights the rays of the sun do not penetrate and veil the stars, therefore they are visible in the daylight – but the sheer incongruity of such a perspective in the midst of Wordsworthian lyricism is striking. The swift, even giddy atmosphere such a flight would generate, was what the poet captured.

“In a reading – … Things happen sooner than planned for or anticipated, but that is for the best … ideas and work tumble out – increase in vital forces – spiritual breakthroughs and out of body experiences; transcendence of limitations. All Eights are end-of-karma cards, so it also means giving up unproductive and unprofitable activities.

“Or: (shadow) act in haste and repent at leisure, especially when it comes to marriage. Future shock and disproportionate reaction to events – a station wagon trying to be a Ferrari. Pay careful attention to all documents, agreements etc, as the hasty nature of the energy may cause serious blunders or omissions.

“The insight of the card: You have abundant energy. Now set some clear goals and focus this drive to achieving them, before it fritters away in interesting distractions.

photo by giorgos tsamakdas

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.

aquariel link

Mysteries of Isis, part Four – The House of God

Posted on June 6, 2015 by janeadamsart

Labyrinth and Rose Cross

Part 4 in the “Isis” series. This Meditation on the Virgo constellation and the Gothic art was written in 1992. It is from my book “The Masters’ Eye” – inspired by Louis Charpentier’s “The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral” (R.I.L.K.O.)

Contact me if you would like a copy of “The Masters’ Eye”. I produce it from home (275 pages) but might be able to turn it into an ebook.

roof, chartres

In the House of God, the Cross represents the IAM (AHAM in sanskrit, AHIEH in hebrew) or AIM of Solomon’s temple. It was laid sky to ground-plan for the Common Era; in the cruciform shape of nave and transepts.

The horizontal beam of the Cross is warp and weft of the great picture of the universe. On this loom is strung the imaging or spectrum of the five senses: our body and terrain of perception.

The vertical beam, soaring limitlessly Above as Below, and effulgent through the sensory fabric, is the essence of our Self. Its spectrum, like Siva’s fiery column, transcends the narrow horizontal band of the senses and their story of space and time. We see higher and lower octaves of the same instrument. (Link to “Cathedral Building“)

Essentially, the horizontal beam manifests time and space. The vertical beam intersects this tapestry at any given point of life, as cognition or awareness, before and after birth and death, and in the depth of dreamless sleep. It is anterior to the ‘evidence’ it illumines. It brings into play our hidden dimension.

The heart of the Cross is a fluid point of stillness wherein the two planes meet. They create upon each other a factor of vital resistance: the birth of an evolutionary consciousness. The vertical beam is masculine, the Creative potential; and the horizontal is feminine, the balancing inertia or momentum: (or rajas, tamas, whose “balance” is sattva.) In the ground-plan of the Cathedral, the vertical is laid along the meridian west to east, Earth’s rotation to sunrise.** The horizontal crosses it, south and north, as do the Pillars of Solomon, to uphold the cosmic temple.

**Sunrise, itself motionless to the rotating surface of Earth, is “outside time”. Sunrise encircles our local measure and engirdles Earth. To the Temple plan, sunrise is the metaphysical centre of gravity, or “sky” unchanging

So we have first the creative principle, the idea upon the ground, a map or sacred diagram laid out along our axis of sunrise. From this arises the actual fabric, like a plant: the Tree of Life’s integrity on the columns of Jakin and Bohaz. The equilibrating of active and passive “poles” of construction, manifests this principle. A draft sketch is translated into an arch, a portal of height, breadth and depth. It manifests for us in three dimensions.

Paradoxically, the visible, audible and tangible, is a worldly cross-section through the numinously unseen. The grace and proportion of the building, altering the consciousness that enters it, is an echo only of the Light which was its inspiration. It is the ripple or projection upon the sensory field, of all time, all space, and simultaneously it is neither.

Nowadays, a hologram is created by projecting laser beams to cross each other at right angles. An image is created in space when the mutual-interference pattern of their rays precisely fits. Upon this principle the perceptible universe is strung, and sustained. The same image-ing of three dimensions, from the galactic to the miniature, will manifest an apparently solid picture of reality, wherever you cut through the projection. You pass your hand through empty air, and yet the picture remains, like a standwave.

The same applies to apparently impregnable infrastructures of our mind, emotions, karmic dragons, and sorrows of life. What are these really? Who holds the lamp which illumines the inner space, like clear sky?

The Cathedral is a projection onto the physical plane, of a “hologrammatic” revelation, achieved by cross-fertilising or marrying that plane with its numinous perpendicular, in sacred geometry.

In twelfth century gothic art – (Fulcanelli’s argot or art-gothique, the slang of the Philosophers’ Stone) – the Knights of the Temple did not depict the Crucifixion. Their true Cross is in the natural ground-plan of heaven to Earth, as drawn with a circle round it by stake and string. This circumscribed cross is also an ancient form of the Hebrew letter TAV, which signifies completion.

The Christ, an ancient, immanent, unfathomable mystery uplifted in stone and earth, is in the Templars’ sanctuaries Un-crucified. The body of nave and transepts lies upon Earth to receive Heaven. This follows the law of mandala and yantra construction, which diagram the laws of tree growth. The holy Spirit so earthed, engages with the commodity of the world. And the gothic Temples to Notre Dame in northern France represent each a star in the Virgin constellation, as laid out over the land.

The real meaning of “the Virgin” is “she who is ripe”.

At the time of harvest she is the fruitful womb, receptacle for implantation, one that is in readiness. The Spirit is seeded deep into matter, into the cave or oracle of Earth – the grain, the bread of life. In an earlier age, Our Lady was Isis of Egypt who reunited the fragments of the body of Osiris into his wholeness or Divinity. She has her counterpart in Hindu cosmology as Parvati, Mother of the universe, Daughter of the Mountain, shakti power of manifestation and abundance. In Greece she was known as Demeter and as Ceres, from whom the grain sprouts.

Her Knights, being Hospitallers or Guardians of the Sanctuary (routes of pilgrimage) enlisted in the early part of the twelfth century Common Era, the support of the Church, whom they funded. They made an offer which could not be refused, to build Houses of God. Their spiritual sponsor was the great Benedictine Bernard of Clairvaux.

But these Knights were not mere Crusaders. They were messengers of Great Mikael, archangelic slayer of Dragons clerical as well as secular: who, looking deep into the dark dense coil of Baphomet, liberates and raises up the Light – as consciousness. A hundred years or so later, the Church, frightened of their rival power, accused them of devil worship and burnt them at the stake.

Here, time as a Great Circle clashed with linear or ‘tick tock’ time. By then the Knights had seeded a number of soaring Temples of Light into the soil of Mother Earth in northern France; and more were undoubtedly planned to fill and peg down the entire constellation; the vessel for the Divine Child. The Black Death followed their demise as an Order, fragmenting time, space and continuity. The Black Death flowed around the gothic sanctuaries which transcended it.

“Gothic” is a strange word, as handed down to us, for it has acquired paradoxical resonances of horror, caricature and over-elaboration – I believe this is due to the plague’s shocking spectre in our deep cellular and racial memory.

The Order reappeared several generations later as a Rosy Cross fraternity, and from about the seventeenth century onward, was reorganised into the Degrees of freemasonry.

From the fertile soil or compost of the Black Death, had sprouted a strange Renaissance flower – Botticelli’s Aphrodite – and the later cultivation of a deductive science to investigate and ravish her.

Hokhmah and Nezach on the Tree
I find a resonance or echo here with the birth of Aphrodite in greek mythology, from the castration of Uranus the god of Revelation. In those legendary dreams, Uranus, the Sky of Stars, lay with Gaea, Earth. Gaea grew tired of the incessant titans Uranus begot on her, and called on their young son Chronos – meaning cycles of Time and therefore limitation – to do the job. The procreative organ of Uranus fell into the sea. It stirred up a titanic froth on the wave, from which emerged the comely figure of Aphrodite, goddess of Desire, pulse of nature’s beauty, and of attraction.

In the geographical solar system, the polar tilt of both Venus and Uranus inclines at a virtual right-angle to that of the other planetary bodies. Mercury, Terra, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Pluto all rotate more or less, west/east. The rotational spin of Venus and Uranus is north/south, almost into the plane of their orbits.

That innocence, inner science, or in-formed awareness of their association is shown in the ancient myths, whose Masters possessed no measure more than their ear to the ground.

From “Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral” by Louis Charpentier:
“The currents in old Earth are numerous and various, but here at Chartres we are concerned with one that is especially sacred, capable of awakening a man to the spiritual life. The DIVINE is born here, and no material influence may be allowed to trouble or destroy it. The Hill of Chartres must not be polluted. That is why, among all the french Cathedrals, Chartres is the only one in which no king, cardinal or bishop is interred. The Hill must remain virgin.”

This paragraph declares the Resurrection of the Christ. Here there is no merely dead seed. The telluric pulse at Chartres is particularly potent. Here under the Mound in ages past, was enthroned a Black Virgin, Our-Lady-under-the-Earth, as a focus for pilgrimage and inner purification. She is our subconscious, so she is the ageless Isis, Demeter, Belisima.

Scorpio & Virgo glyphs: phallus and womb

The currents in old earth – like the mesh of chorionic villi, those tiny vessels and fibres of lifeblood which embed the embryo in the lining of the maternal womb – are the same subtle meridians of the Dragon or Serpent energy which flow along the leylines. In the landscape, as in our body, these are gathered and released or contained at acupunctural power-points – (see in Charpentier’s work, and below, the map of Virgo Our Lady of the Constellation in France) – to invoke Archangel Mikael’s protection, and for gestation.

These ageless foci of authority or power, are condensers. They are dolmens or druidic circles of stones. They became towers, temples and churches to Michael and Maria, the Guardian and the Mother of God. The Michael and Mary leyline in England runs from the eastern part of the country through Ogbourne St George in Wiltshire through Avebury and Stonehenge, Glastonbury and a succession of tumps, mounds and chapels across Sedgemoor, Devon and Cornwall to St Michael’s Mount in the bay of Penzance. A friend I visited in Ogbourne, where George slew the dragon of Albion, has a well inside her house sunk deep into this Line. Her guests have interesting dreams at night.

To “slay” or pierce the Dragon, harnesses its creative strength. It can be tamed and trained to become a strong and willing servant or alliance to the higher power. This corresponds to the Karmic “leyline” of tendency (ascending and descending Lunar nodes, known as the Head and Tail of the dragon) in our astrological maps. Where the Moon’s orbit around the Earth crosses the path of Earth’s orbit around the Sun, these are the Lunar nodes.

The Knight is the seer., The Dragon is his personal attachment to the mortal coil to master. The Dragon, as electric current in the copper wire, is coiled around a MAGNET, the treasure of the Source, our inner elixir.

1992

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.

aquariel link

What is a School of the Soul?

Posted on May 8, 2015 by janeadamsart

What is a school of the soul?

A school is a training ground. A soul is a story within stories of life.

This post is based on my notes during a Kabbalah group meeting.

Tree of school of the soul, by Halevi

I think a school of the soul is a disciplined environment whose collective string is tuned by agreement to a subtle or divine frequency. It is like an orchestra. In practice, a school may have a practical, a ceremonial or a contemplative bias. Kabbalahsociety is a contemplative group. We do field work, and we meet regularly for an exchange of anecdotes, humour, and observation. We observe human geology, political tensions and our tidal process, and refer these phenomena to the Tree of Life. The tutor’s skill keeps a tight ship – a light touch on the tiller.

Some of us received an early training in schools which developed issues of power and property and went wrong. Through this, our unconscious projections were exposed: there are no accidents in the work. The initial discipline planted a good experiential framework in the side pillars. Nothing is wasted.

The basic requirements of a school of the soul are simple: a place and time for meeting; an invocation to open and close the Tree: harmony in the working group. We are courteous, speaking when our turn is given, and not to argue a position. Companions come and go, they are not coerced. The laws of Providence regulate our attendance and individual contribution – as any wise tutor recognises.

Some schools get corrupted by the perennial human weakness for power, sex and money at the top. A regime of fear percolates down a hierarchy whose arteries harden and block the outlet. In fact, it may be our fate to confront thus, our private tyrannies, and so these opportunities were given. They became converted to an inner discipline, so that we may bond with kindred spirits.

Out of many thousands among men,
one may endeavor for perfection,
and of those who have achieved perfection,
hardly one knows Me in truth.

Bhagavad Gita, chapter 7

What is the percentage in the world, of those in the Work? It boils down to about 6,000 committed souls world wide – a homeopathic potency across the human grain.

In some societies, much energy goes into property maintenance, publicity and funding; the real schools where real work is being done, are rare. They operate within a different radar.

The Kabbalahsociety emphasises transparency, personal discipline and maturity – a ripening process over the decades. The side pillars of Revelation and Reason are balanced through the the centre KAV or stem of Jacobs’ Ladder. Levels of soul and spirit are discriminated through this tool, a barometer of the world – a staff of light.

Jacobs Ladder, by Halevi

Menorah Seven and Three

The key is the Menorah.

As individuals, we are each a school of the soul in bud, with our teaching input, our relationships, personal vision, wisdom and responsibility in the world, to keep practicing.

Melchisedek became Enoch, and was released from the frame of human time. He walked with God, and he was not: for God took him. The commands – do not steal, do not adulterate – are foundational. We learn to recognise daily the vegetable, animal and human principles and character around us. If our conduct is correct we are living the Kabbalah, and we start to see the Principles at work.

It is good to talk of a school of a soul, and to recall that my private life is a school of the soul, in microcosm. As the path clears some way through Karmic road works, cones and bypasses, it flows. I flow. Rules may be enacted, but the Law is discovered through lived experience. Before the Emperors came to power, the Romans had begun to build Greek principles of democratic government into a forum.

A flexible seeing psychology is a forum: a capacity for examination and a socratic inner questioning.

The Holy One generates through all our cosmic history, through tsim-tsum and the glory of the worlds and each “moment now” of the ‘big bang’, a potential towards wholeness and healing, which is perfection. From a tiny apple pip grows a TREE.

Since ever the book of time opened, the tsim tsum – breath of the Holy One – creates an interval for manifestation – the asymmetry or stress, by which we live and desire and grow. A rainbow’s perfect circle through fire and dew in the physical world is bound to fade and vanish. Planetary and galactic orbits are elliptical, and so is the egg and the tiny seed: the ellipse is our sustenance. In embryo and cellular multiplication, in spiral plant growth, in the animal kingdom and in all human difficulty, the ellipse prevails, as evolution.

Justice is the curve of evolution.

Like a pendulum, the dynamic through the Tree and in our lives moves towards a greater manifestation of the whole; the divine Platonic Circle is seeded in our soul. From within every spiritual tradition and cosmology, the Holy One “enjoys the interplay”. We say, “This is Hell, but it is interesting” – as psychological crises prompt awakening through black eyes, broken noses, religious intolerance, greed and climate change.

Wood bird yantra

We had a group discussion on philanthropic millionaires who can give money intelligently where governments cannot – Bill Gates is informed enough to drop ten million quid in the right place. Wealthy students support the teacher. Youngsters and lottery winners are ruined by the pests of unearned wealth. The general election rises and falls on the pendulum.

kabbalist philosopher, halevi collection

We show on our walls, the professional tools of our trade – like a plumber’s certificates – to reassure customers or seekers. A portrait artist can reveal beyond any photo, a sitter’s private trust and humanity. In the midst of life, I value my tutor’s integrity and personal quirks and enclosures. He is “elliptical” – a growing-towards – just as I am. Along the Fourth Way (Ouspensky) we come into the School and move into solitude, or move from solitude into the School – the movement, bridges the inner and outer worlds. Nothing is wasted.

young nymph, 1957

This poem plays with planetary Sefiroth in Plato’s cave:

Chess Cabale (2004)

“Who sports in the Self” is no one person,
but feeling a greater Circle arise
around a candle flame;

and within each smaller Circle –
“gathered here
are Companions of the Light.”

Here are the dreaming Moon and Mercurious child:
Aphrodite, blacksmith’s wife, disarms her warrior Ares;
great Zeus of mercy and thunderbolts, leaps with his entire Olympiad
from Chronos’ tight bowel, measure of time and mind;
while Wisdom, magus of stars
touches the daisies …

Circling the Sun, the Wanderers pass
as shadows through my cave.
Watching nature’s fiery hieroglyph
upon platonic walls, I love
my pageant – knights and damsels wrestling
dragons … eros.

Companions of the Light form a Circle, times a circle.
Companions of the Knight mounting trusty Cabale
square the Circle, speed of light.

When first shown the Tree,
I held not yet my life.

young Theseus 1957

No more could brave Theseus lift his heavy stone
to find his father underneath,
till he’d wrestled three good years
and more.

Through negative film,
our faces appear distorted,
lantern raised a little only,
above the trail.

From the forest cave
with birds’ throat at break of dawn,
the Knight of holy Graal
riding Cabale with questing sword
squares his circle onward, inward –
grace, restraint –
by lions’ strength, beholding beauty.

The Masters’ Eye, 1992, 2004

talking, 1957

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.

aquariel link

Robert and the Tanya

Posted on February 6, 2015 by janeadamsart

Arcanum 0 – the Fool: A pilgrim in Sedona. (In the distance you can see the peak called Thunder Mountain, at the foot of which Robert lived)

When I met Robert Adams in 1996, the surrounding Arizona landscape spoke volumes to me of his teaching and his face and eyes. I walked and explored each day into the sacred red rock wilderness: Robert’s Ashram. At the end of my booklet “Imponderables” – (see the last four posts) – I included the following Kabbalah passage from the Lubavitcher Tanya, which also spoke and sang to me of Robert: about No thing.

Ampitheatre – Bishop’s Rock

From the ‘Tanya’:

“… FOR WHEN the intellect in the rational soul deeply contemplates and immerses itself exceedingly in the greatness of G-d, how he fills all worlds and encompasses all worlds, and in the presence of Whom everything is considered as nothing – there will be born and aroused in his mind and thought, the emotion of awe for the Divine Majesty, to fear and be humble before his blessed greatness which is without end of limit, and to have the dread of G-d in his heart.

“Next, his heart will glow with an intense love, like burning coals, with a passion, desire and longing, and a yearning soul towards the greatness of the blessed En Sof. This constitutes the culminating passion of the soul, of which scripture speaks as ‘my soul thirsts for G-d, my soul longs for thee.’ This thirst is derived from the element of Fire, which is found in the divine soul. As students of natural science affirm, and so it is also in the Tree of Life, the element of Fire is in the heart, whilst the source of Water and moisture is in the brain (or third eye?) … referring to the faculty of Hokhmah called ‘the water of the divine soul’.

“The rest of the seven emotional attributes of man are all offshoots of fear and love and their derivations.

“Da’at, whose etymology is found in the verse: ‘And Adam knew Eve’, implies union. It is that faculty which binds one’s mind with a very firm and strong bond to, and firmly fixes one’s thought on, the greatness of the blessed En Sof, without diverting one’s mind.

“Even one who is wise and understanding of the greatness of the blessed En Sof will not – unless he binds his knowledge and fixes his thought with firmness – create in his soul true love and fear, but only vain fancies.”

From the ‘TANYA’ Ch.3
by Rabbi Schneur of Liadi, 1787

NOTES
En Sof – ‘without end’, the Infinite, ‘has no beginning
Hokhmah – revelation, wisdom, ‘the potentiality of what’ – the second of the Ten Sefiroth or emanations of En Sof
Da’at – unknown cognition, awe, abyss. Union of worlds and of man with woman. Knowledge in the sense of concentration.

The meaning of these three letters within Bishop’s Rock – Aleph, Cheth, Daleth – is ‘EChD – from One to Oneness’. It emerges from the infinite Silence, and returns into the Silence.

The fear and love of God are Gevurah and Hesed on the Tree of Life: the soul triad’s equilibrium.

Tree of Life with Robert’s teaching of Four Principles, Three Vehicles and Three Virtues. Note Gevurah and Hesed – constraints/severity and grace: the fear and the love.

When Robert was a teenager in New York, he woke up saying “God … God … God” – who passed his school exams for him while he gazed upon the atoms in class. He had a Jewish mum and a Catholic dad – or was it the other way round?

To me he said, “it never ends, there is no end”; and he said, “relax“. He said other things, but I couldn’t understand them through his Parkinsons whisper – I could only absorb and feel.

Robert’s transmission of the silence between the words, felt part and parcel of my Kabbalah and alchemy studies. It is all the One, wearing Joseph’s many coloured coat of dreams, dharma and pilgrimage. As the Sufis say – from the Source, we return to the Source. We emerge from God, moving into God.

From my photo album –
Bishop’s Rock and Oak Creek, Arizona

“Your Self doesn’t know the answer.
The true Self has no question.
Therefore there is no answer.”

Robert 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.

aquariel link

Robert’s Imponderables: Part Four

Posted on January 27, 2015 by janeadamsart

Completing this series of Robert’s sayings in Transcript §85:

“There never was a time when you were not, and there will never be a time when you disappear. There is no birth for you, there’s no prevailing of your body, there’s no disappearance. There is only eternal life . . . Ponder this.”

“The mind cannot destroy the mind, pondering cannot destroy the mind, thinking cannot destroy the mind. The only way to destroy the mind is to inquire, ‘To whom is there a mind?’ . . . Ponder this.”

“You are already free and liberated, and there’s really nothing you have to do. Just be your Self . . . Ponder this.”

“To be your Self means that you’re nothing else. To be your Self means that you’re not the body, nor the mind, nor the world, nor its things. To be the Self means that you are the imperishable Self, which is all pervading.

“Water cannot drown it, fire cannot burn it. You are that Self that has always existed. Some people call the Self ‘God’, some people call the Self ‘Brahman’, some people call the Self ‘choiceless effortless pure awareness’. It makes no difference what you call the Self. Just to know you are That, will free you immediately . . . Ponder this.”

Sedona Landscapes – click on image to view

“There is really no one who can do anything for you. I cannot really do anything for you, because I am really in your Self. There’s no difference between my Self and your Self. There’s one Self. Therefore, when you look at me, you see your Self. What do you see? . . . Ponder this.”

“Ponder the one who has been pondering all this time.”

“Ask yourself, ‘Who am I? Why is it so hard to become the pure unblemished Self? For whom is it hard?’

“Ask yourself, ‘Why do I think I’m human, and have to go through experiences?’

“Ask yourself . . . Ponder this.”

“That’s enough pondering.”

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.

aquariel link

Robert’s Imponderables – Part Three

Posted on January 24, 2015 by janeadamsart

Part Three of extracts from Robert’s satsang transcript §85 – see previous posts …

“You have absolutely nothing to do with pondering anything, for the truth is already present, shining in all its glory and splendour, and you are That . . . Ponder this.”

“There is really nothing you have to do to get yourself Self-realised, only to get yourself out of the way . . . Ponder this.”

“Since there is no one to ponder, why are you pondering this? You are beyond pondering, beyond trying to change conditions, beyond trying to improve your humanhood, beyond trying to get along in the world. Since you are already the world, there is nothing else to do but to awaken to the truth . . . Ponder this.”

“To be your Self means not to be the body, or the mind, or the conditions in your life . . . Ponder this.”

“To be always happy, to be always contented, always at peace, and not to think at all, are the marks of a realised being . . . Ponder this.”

“What you see in this world is only your self. You can never see anything else. Wherever you look, you will see yourself. If you have troubles, you will see troubles everywhere. If you are at peace with yourself, you will see peace everywhere. You are the cause and creator of your particular world, and yet you have the power to change it, by turning within and not reacting to the things of this world whatsoever . . . Ponder this.”

“You are born into a certain situation, with certain parents, a certain religion, a certain environment. This is alright, and this is all good, and this is how it should be. Use the opportunity to awaken. Instead of feeling sorry for yourself, and comparing yourself with others, use the opportunity to awaken, to become totally free, by negating all these things and understanding the truth about yourself . . . Ponder this.”

‘It is a rare privilege to be born as a human being, even though it is an illusory birth. But to be born as a human being is the only way you can find your Self. An animal, a tree, a mineral, cannot do this. You have been given the rare opportunity of birth, so that you may find Self realisation, and unfold into your true nature. Do not use your time for anything else. This is the purpose of being in this birth: to become absolutely free and liberated . . . Ponder this.”