The Desert Rose

Posted on April 1, 2014 by janeadamsart

Hermit, Arcanum 9

What is the desert? the innate way of unfoldment: truth.

In the Red Book, Jung journeyed and wrote: “Walking around in a circle I happen to return to myself and to him, the solitary one, who lives down in the depths hidden from the light, held securely by the warm bosom of the rock, above him the glowing desert and sharp resplendent skies.

“The solitary lives in endless desert full of awesome beauty. He looks at the whole and at inner meaning. He loathes manifold diversity if it is near him. He looks at it from afar in its totality. Consequently silvery splendour and joy and beauty cloak diversity for him. What is near him must be simple and innocent, since close at hand the manifold and complicated tear and break through the silvery splendour.”

There follows a long poem with expanded script, in which the magid, Philemon or Ammonius Sacca speaks: (see italics)

“The sun and its glow nourish him … the solitary loves the desert above all since it is a mother to him, giving him food and invigorating warmth at regular intervals.”

desert rose socotra/moffett/nationalgeographic.com

Thus also the interior sun of the soul. I have mist on my window. I am dull this morning, and out of relationship. I have nothing and am uneasy with what I have. Yet I know it is condensation on the window, which blurs life, and the sun – Great SOLomon – will clear it as he rises. The creatures and the histories of the soul wake up slowly, and give the prospect some positive meaning. The soul is a full engagement with everything. I think this defines the soul. With the waking up there is a deepening of the mirage, and some change of key.

Geode: “A Way of Life” by jim Ede

The thin Hermit in his hut with his book and the heat, wanders in an orchard of lush fruit and flowers, all reaching for his hand, his breath. He engages with the desert. “Fragrant resins drip from his trees, and under his feet, thrusting seed breaks open.”

I engage with North London. It is the poetry of life in whatever medium. Sometimes the poet over-reaches, fantasises and falters. The poet has an ethical task, to remain where it is real, and to question every surplus. The poet has an ethical task: to not invent. Invention turns to mist on the window.

desert roses by Alayn 1807, trekearth.com

I think for human default mode generally, “the horror of the desert and its withered evaporation …” permeates the conventional stress of livelihood, entertainment and mortgage. For the hermit in the Libyan desert or in North London … “he stammers when he speaks of the indescribable fullness, his eye rests on the garden, his ears listen to the source, his breath draws in sweet perfume from blossom rich trees.” …

desert rose from http://thoughtfulrandomness.wordpress.com

I see the hermit in the midday sun, in the deep shade of his tent or hut, with book and abundance: the ferocity of the dry heat, the ringing silence, his parched limbs, the rustlings. I see human security which seeks above all else to cover my head with a roof and a story. The stories in our souls are read to us at bedtime, to keep us covered and safe. The hermit falls into a place where he cannot write any story at all; there is no room for it. The sea in my face is a desert. From the desert all things come. In the desert is the well, and the camel drinks.

There are many sounds in the desert – of the soft mother, the wind; and of cracked insects and darting lizards. There is the endless sound of space. This is the fruit the Hermit hears. HERE.

Hear it through the trains, the passing cars, the songbirds in the budding trees. All of London is the sound in this corner of it which is silence: this window on which a Rune is drawn in the dew: my body’s unending kiss with gravity.

Gaudier’s Dancer – in ‘A Way of Life’ by Jim Ede

Are not lovers the gravity with each other? Is not the Hermit the gravity with God? In this mode the thought with the beloved is gravity. The Hermit’s daily dawn footprints through the silver dunes are blowing in the wind. Their edges soften, but he walks some more, and again next day. There is always the trace of his passing, and the wanderer finds it, follows the thread to the web’s gossamer centre, follows the Sun’s rays inwards, becomes still and is blessed. The Question is left open. The wanderer abandons the answer he or she seeks.

“He gives you a small insignificant fruit, which has just fallen at his feet. It appears worthless to you, but if you consider it, you will see that this fruit tastes like a sun which you could not have dreamt of. It gives off a perfume which confuses your senses and makes you dream of rose gardens and sweet wine and whispering palm trees. And you hold this one fruit in your hand dreaming, and you would like the tree from which it grows, the garden in which this tree stands, and the sun which brought forth this garden …

“And you yourself want to be that solitary who strolls with the sun in his garden, his gaze resting on pendant flowers, and his hand brushing a hundred fold of grain and his breath drinking the perfume from a thousand roses.

“Dull from the sun and drunk from fermenting wines, you lie down in ancient graves, whose walls resound with many voices and many colours of a thousand solar years.

“When you grow, then you see everything living again as it was. And when you sleep, you rest, like everything that was, and your dreams echo softly again from distant temple chants.

“You sleep down through the thousand solar years, and you wake up through the thousand solar years, and your dreams full of ancient lore adorn the walls of your bedchamber. You also see yourself in the totality.”

C.G.Jung, The Red Book

poppy pod in drinking-glass – from “A Way of Life” by Jim Ede

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/

The Lighthouse Keeper – Part Two

Posted on July 22, 2013 by janeadamsart

17 July PART TWO

I discover some thoughts in blogland which convert the esoteric learning curve and fascination, to Humanness, compassion, right living, mindful presence … which is what they truly are. They are atomic particles from a goldmine – the miners in the mountains, as the alchemists say. Language slips away, into the hard graft, the Way of Life and love.

And I find another post, on moderation – enrich your life with simplicity, enjoying technology efficiently, but without excess. The wealth is here and now.

I try to stay near the Hermit, for he is easy to visit across the starry water, and to find, and to cool my mind. Enoch and the Well – see the post before “the Lighthouse Keeper part One” – was a profound contact.

The Hermit’s cottage is earth lined; walls are minimally dressed, a plaster wash maybe, stone-flagged floor, and bits of rug. When I go inside from the sunlight, I can just see an open fireplace for the kettle, and the table which sages and teachers have – the noble grain is scrubbed white. There’s a bench and possibly a chair or two. Enter this room at any moment, without even crossing the water: a brief impression of the lake in my mind. I am here, within the summer drone of outdoors.

The Hermit is my Tarot Arcanum 9, and sometimes he looks like this. He doesn’t reveal too much. Impression of a person of great delicacy, able hands. His presence is a sweet altitude in my breath.

When I drew him in my Arcana in 1991, I was giving up smoking. His is the Tarot of the Will: the deep impenetrable power which picks up life and helps to overcome old addictions, however painful it is to do so.

There is an absence of the sharp smoker in my breath; an absence of other attachments also, as they wore away. They become light cloths or rags – the sun burnt holes in them – they do not matter. Yet I feel a little bereaved of my romantic intensity. Sometimes there is a “flip-flop” – as Ramesh Balsekar would say – to a momentary surface sceptic, who lost that fuel, and feels tired.

The Hermit is the well: the well of depth, delicacy, wonder and becoming. His blue cap is YOD – I need the concentration. I get scattered easily.

I cannot see many disciples rowing across the lake with groceries for him, but I suppose he has them. Each is like myself, and feels uniquely connected. He is yet Self- sufficient – our sense of “all-oneness” alone. Between the physical and subtle worlds, he doesn’t need much to eat. Like Master R, he is fueled by oats, honey and fresh water. I am sure he keeps hens too. He keeps bees and makes strong cider from his fruit trees. He is actually quite busy. Profoundly Virgoan, he manages to grow and grind enough oats and wheat for his bread. There is some for visitors. He is busy! – he is a smallholder. Yet he has the gift of the Magidim, to increase his present supply – the well never empties. He handles in this Way, the physical environment, by touch. I can learn everything from this, bringing it back to accompanying my loved ones.

He is maintained physically through his well fed students. We give him manifestation.

(There is a high Law in Creation (Beriah), which in the lower astral worlds (Yetzirah), gets perverted to vampirism. Vampirism is not just the Dracula tales of old. It rampages through relationships, the media and the commercial world in the collective subconscious, and generates imbalances. Its fuel is ignorance and greed).

But the Law between student/disciple and the Inner-plane being, is the Law of love – a two-way current of regeneration. As Ramesh Balsekar used to say, there is no Guru until the devotee discovers and makes him so. Guru manifests in dialogue. Guru takes shape and eternal fluid form, according to the desire for interior peace. Guru is not a person. Guru is a sanskrit word, meaning “dispeller of darkness.”

The interior contact established, is Antakharana or pipeline for the Maestri. It is the conduit whereby an electron orbit of life, jumps to a higher one. Through Daat – union on the Tree of Life – the quantum leaps. Profound distress is often the prompt. Out of the depth we cry to thee, and we leap.

When we find Guru, the dispeller of the dark, we pray together. That means, there is an interior birdsong, the light of the Holy One … through the sap of each tree in the countless forest. My Hermit’s eyes are amused; sometimes blue and sometimes brown.

“Find what you are gifted in, which no one else does, or is; and develop that.”
Peace Mercutio! and gratitude.

Swan of Brahma

Now I love the Hermit, who is Hermetic mercury. He combines in his fragrant person, the Cube, the staff of Asclepius (one snake), the caduceus (two snakes) and all those quivers of the quick silver. The highest region of alchemical mercury is the golden cube Tattva in the Sahasrara lotus “above my head”. The nectar is collected in the third eye, which bows like a swan through Sushumna, to the heart. My heart is a Sun with wings. The staff materializes down through the lower chakras, and meets like a root, snake-entwined – the lovely Kundalini. It is silent.

Sacred India Tarot Queen of Staves – Radha Ma Svaha

Kundalini awakening opens inexhaustible secrets of the Universe. They burst up through my column in a fountain of “write”. There is no end to the play of the Fountain – the j h v h pulse. As I grow older, I discover the silence is all the secrets of the Universe, and nearer than my breath. Access to them – the key – can be turned to love or to self-inflation: to Life or to live-backwards which is evil. Of themselves the Mysteries are neutral – they get converted to human feeling and to Old Issues, expediently. There is no end to Nature’s cosmic abundance – the empress: wisdom and folly.

The Empress, Arcanum 3

The note in my mind just now is A-sharp – violet: the meditation key. Though my Hermit contact is so personal, I feel I can and should share him. Why? because the inner hermit is Archetypal – a type of home coming..

The lovely Kundalini is a Rod stuck into the ground: she twirls like a distaff, spinning yarn. We are individually suited to perceive objective Teachers or subjective ones. I am of the subjective type. I develop my picture story, as an artist, a maker of windows. However, their symbols and associations within my field, are an ancient Common land. It is free for all who have the heart’s entry. A fluid, shape-shifting firewall is not static.

Being a subjective type, means I co-create: that my creations when mature, reside on the astral plane for other souls to access. It gave me a lot of responsibility, to define over the decades, what it entails, and how to edit, and how to sieve the wheat from chaff. There were and are deep wounds in life. But the Process is a shining farm-labourer, carrying the sheaves for stacking, in scratched hands.

Wheatsheaf in the shape of letter GIMEL, with labourer in the field

Sometimes my entire lifetime is joined together, all the impressions as One. Fancy admiring farm labourers when I was a child … because they showed me the essence of the Great Work which I would engage in – the Will. Our soul knows infinitely beyond what we think we know, or are taught. I have the same knowledge now, extending into the future. What is it?

What do I know about my Self? and the farm labourers carrying wheat? There need be no verbal answer yet, but how does it feel?

Harvest and fertility. My drawing of the wheat-sheaves stacked together, forms a Gimel. But Gimel is the potential harvest of the Priestess. While the Empress is Venus, and pregnant among standing wheat, the Priestess is aligned with Mercury. The Priestess of the Moon is aligned with Mercury because she keeps the shrine swept, and holds the memory. The shrine, a cave in the earth, is Virgoan, and thus Mercurial. Recall and respect the Shrine in my everyday doings.

What is my knowledge of the future? Rather than speculate, which the surface-mercury does haphazardly and with fear, build and sweep the inner shrine each day: creation – a conscious performance.

Where I am coming to now, is the job of the personal shrine. This is the one which makes the contact. Organised shrines administer the contact by committee to belief.

The personal shrine is a holy place. By whatever means, it enters the wide world, beginning HERE. In Halevi’s zodiac wheel, the 6h house (Virgo-ruled) is “Operation”. Virgo as the shrine, and as the cosmic secretary, operates: “le opere” are the works. Transmission – as on military ships – is a morse-code operator.

Cosmic clock – wheel of the Zodiac, by Zev ben Shimon Halevi

My personal shrine suffers a continuing breakdown of shallow pride. When we accept the job of Lighthouse Keeper, we accept this. We live in a tower which shines at sea. By hook or by crook, my dark tower of pride, my cracking seedcase, transforms to a tower of alchemy.

GALLERY – to view, click on any image and wait to upload

Alpha Omega Stone greenbook - after fulcanelli

A tower of alchemy – (and make of it precisely what I can) – shines across the sea like the Hermit’s lamp, and the vessels out there can see it. The Hermit stands on a mountain guiding souls up the path: the Lighthouse keeper stands in the sea – Hermes walks in the sea, carrying a globe and Staff – the same. I shall get submerged again during the day, but I write this, as always, with the commitment to transmission, here and now.

Two illustrations from Alexander Roob’s Alchemy & Mysticism

A note on HARPIES – when passing between Scylla and Charybdis:

When I look at my harpies – the spiteful scolds – they stop what they are saying. If I look at them, they cannot speak or screech. Give it time. They look horrible and hot and carrion, and they might change colour. Mine are black like crows, and after a while they turn greyish, they start to fade and get weak and meaningless. Harpies do not thrive on being held in the air and looked at. They thrive on swooping – just as I am dozing off – and pushing and stabbing and being heard and believed.

Dawn complaints drift slowly apart, like heavy clouds. The nectar is a little stream on the hillside, as I touch up my recent Tarot reflection – a visual poem in itself, within Death and the Empress to each side. I like the way the Priestess and the Hanged Man peep through the firm positions of the Chariot and the Emperor – I love the colour scheme.

Tarot reflection, July 2013

I am depressed about the human monkey and all its unhealthy persuasion. Deeply so – I have to wrestle with it all the time. My small old fashioned sermons to myself are mocked by the disturbing glitter of DNA-meddlesome-technology.

Yet that genetic engineering stuff, the ‘playing god’, is itself ILLUSORY. I see this now. It is a trap – a religion even – capturing worshippers, consumers and fearful adherents. When my Hermit helps me to awaken, I have perspective; I see a scale of values. I see the utter seductiveness of the monkey game, which has no understanding of the Great Game of cosmic balances. The monkey game believes and fears, that we humans are all alone, spearheading the universe and bent on self destruct. That primitive dark-ages concept prevails. I feel something other, beyond and behind and inside the box. Is this too, a daydream, a denial? Who can say?

The one thing which is sure, is the Good. The essential human values and friendship. The right from wrong. It has an utterly different flavour from anxiety-default-mode – or ambition – which crowds and occupies the race’s big brains.

Parallel worlds touch and mutually thrive.

The hanging man overturns the conventional occupation. “Go on walking contrary to the way of the world. Lift a stone and I am there”. The hanging man upends the nightmare. With my Hermit in the cottage, is the moment smelling of bees; eternity. Choose eternity!

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

Aquariel link

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright (c) janeadamsart 2012-2013. 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

Violet Woman and the Hermit

Posted on March 17, 2013 by janeadamsart

I have been touching on the Tarot path of the Star, in my Parvati-Siva posts so far. On the Tree of Life, this is Netzach to Yesod, Sphere of Venus to the Moon: the Desire nature’s bond with the automatic consciousness.

Stop and reflect these resonances. Venus is deep green, Moon a violet crystal. These colours together are sweet, like my painting Flower the Despair of Painters, of which I could enlarge just the centre !

Occult practice employs them. It turns them into oxes to pull and push the desires and beliefs, and to hurry things up a bit. I don’t have a desire to do that. I only want to “see that it is very good”. To push and pull is the fate of illusion.

So she pours just for the sake of pouring. The star shines just for the sake of shining. Of the star’s interior are unbelievable forces and eternity. Tangle the tiny walnut brain with more study? No. The structural school is all in position, the home (BETh) is built. Illumine the bodymind with the star, the precision of being the woman pouring the water nakedly: the pool, the twilight in the field.

In Tarot, Key 17 is called “the Intelligence of Nature“. There is a butterfly on the rose.

I read Paul Foster Case’s Lessons, because his every single word as turned, is potent and unwasteful. He is at the plough, and ropes of red earth upturn, like a river. Use the senses as tattvas; frank-incense smell generates a gothic temple.

Tarot Key 17 is quintessentially myself, who sit here doing nothing but pour, pour, near the scarlet ibis in – hey, that’s a frankincense-tree! The violet cannot help but smell secret and lovely, the sound of the water to flow, the shine of the Stars to glow down seven chakras: the staff of life, the subtle connection, the well, cosmos to the ground.

BOTA Tarot Keys 17 & 9

The picture language says it all.

In the background of Key 17 is the distant Violet Mountain. The Hermit standing upon its snows, shines the Lamp in pitch dark. The Hermit is Yod, the semitic, semantic sperm of the Hebrew alephbeis, script of flame. The woman of the Star is the medium, fresh as a daisy, contemplative as a brooding witch. Key 17 joins up ALL THE WRITING in the well. The little scarlet ibis in the incense-tree is Thoth, scribe of Hermes.

The Hermit is not alone. He is all-One. He is often misunderstood. They think he is sad, but he is full of joy.

The Hermit’s YOD cap is deep blue, the colour of the Priestess’s subconscious ocean: the ‘feminine’ sense of touch. He is androgynous. Key 9 is called “the Intelligence of Coition”. It also governs alchemically, the assimilation of Solar energy in our food, which passes through chyle in the “black dragon” (colon) into the blood as red and white “soldiers” – the cells which maintain life in every city of the body. The cities are the organs. You can see them in the old, romantic alchemical engravings, and it is called “The Work of the Sun”. Through the Hermit, spiritual voltage is earthed, and enters the heartbeat: and under the Hermit and his Priestess cap, sprout festivals of fertility.

There is an immersion in the beauties here. What discipline permits the archetype to pass through and onward, workably? The method of knowing the Tree brought me to this point of love. But the love, though constant, is fluid and fleeting. To build and refresh daily the astral eternal Temple – Keep it practical. Picture the chakras white, violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red – the white first of all, an unbudding stellar brilliance, sinking through the rainbow strata to earth.

The chakras on the Tree of Life. The root chakra at the base of the spine, is actually our connection with the ground.

The chakras on the Tree of Life. The root chakra at the base of the spine, is our whole connection with the ground.

So much is written of the chakras, their arguable symbolism, their colour systems and mantras … to confuse poor pilgrims in differing cultures. None of it matters. I find for myself, the simplest possible – the rainbow spectrum root to shoot. Make the seven centres work, and keep it awake: plumbline into earth. Does each flower, blade of grass, tree and bird, feel and re-member this? – even as Isis with her Osiris? Nature is red in tooth and claw, but the core of Nature is bliss, the bliss of YHVH’s breath.

Alchemy Tree of Life, the World of Assiyah, material, the physical Universe. Note the violet path connecting Yesod (pale violet, the personal foundation) and Netzach (green) and the shadowy path (Netzach Malkuth) of sleep and cellular regeneration. The Hermit path goes out-of-frame. It joins Tifareth to Hesed (Grace & Opportunity) and its colour is a gold-shot green: the musical key of F.

Malkuth Sefira – Earth – contains the colours of the four elements, slate, citrine, rust and indigo. The oval is akasha-tejas tattva – the Saturn Mars centres. Their balanced function is a secret Key to Gold: it earths it. In this spectrum, gold is Tifareth, the heart, or Sun, and Hod is bright orange, the “messenger” frequency, or bearer of the solar Rays. Tifareth interweaves the male and feminine triangles in Malkuth and Yesod: a Seal of Solomon, temple of the Living God.

These became my recipes over time; but for more information of the Tree in Toledo tradition, visit http://www.kabbalahsociety.org

For Tarot in the Tree, visit http://www.bota.org, who do an excellent correspondence course. They teach the colour scale and its sound-frequencies, like a musical instrument. They supply the 22 bota Tarot Keys in outline: the student colours them in.

It takes practice, to inform the conditioned bodymind – to let sky-Siva penetrate the sleepy tangle. For instance, for the third eye – violet – I picture a violet gossamer spinning sphere: to see spring violets in their deep green leaves, I focus between the eyes. The violet complementary tone is topaz – an orange crystal point of fire. Seeing between the eyes quietens the mind, and brings detachment and the proper focus to a life-problem. The tools and colours in the paintbox are all here: use them! Use them for freedom.

Lens – another violet crystal!

The plumb-line is a meditative state. In my Aquariel “be-a-log” to companion this, I posted the Root and Shoot of the Priestess. She belongs to the book of emerging method, and there she is, in the Hermit’s blue cap … She’s been in the wings for a long while. She was one of my early breakthroughs: a method inspired by masonic symbols.

Memo to myself: follow each initiative with love.

I don’t know who drew this charming Sivaic hermit

Aphrodite after Botticelli

Sankara gives the Vedas … Annapurna is in the background. (ja 1994)

Looking towards Damehole Point: a childhood playground. I hope to return.

Window: Siva crystal

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.

link to Cathedral Building & the Priestess

All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/