march 25, 2022 - plant of frenzy
L. temulentum, darnel, false wheat. intoxicating twin, symbol of subversion, mimic weed.
an altered state by way of adulterated grain. a peasantry living in a semi-permanent state of hallucination. bread, not bread. madness. not madness.
november 15, 2021 - no mind just vibe
helichrysum.
helios sun chrysos golden
everlasting, immortelle, strawflower.
calling on circles, time less time.
that tooth and claw may rest a while
among herbaceous and honeyed threads.
august 30, 2021 - the boundary between two worlds is a hole you have to enter
deep in ancient caves where shamans once traveled to other worlds the flicker of firelight reveals art meant to be viewed in space and also recently theorized, in time. with the movement of flame over painterly effects including color shifts and superimpositions- herds run, an ibex turns her head, a deer shape shifts into a bull, and hidden animals emerge from brambles.
[image of a roughly 30,000 year old cave painting from Chauvet Pont D'Arc.
theory from "The First Picture Show: Cinematic Aspects of Cave Art" by Edward Wachtel]
animation: the state of being full of life.
projection: a thing that extends outward from something else.
portal: a sacred entry into another world.
motion. picture. magic.
[scene from "Northern Exposure" where Leonard the healer buries Ed's hand in the dirt, a ritual that over the course of time will reveal that Ed has been called to be a Shaman.]
"To concoct, with whatever illegitimate art, a perfume from the poisons themselves. To find in obscure herbs and urges, in the very vulnerability, a trace of remedy- from the stale cadaver the precursor for the elixer."
magic is empowerment by attention to detail.
from Pharmako Gnosis by Dale Pendell
may 10, 2021 - palingenesis or bust
"Mimetic dancing, accompanied by bird wing whistles and pipes, was a prelude to music and poetry. Dancing grew out of observing the movements of animals and implies human identity with them. Dance gave rise to rapture, which led to consciousness, the realization of death, and the hope of rebirth. Out of this, art is born."
from Lady of the Beasts; the Goddess and Her Sacred Animals by Buffie Johnson
march 10, 2021 - not the wind but the language of the wind
"To think of color as a substance with density and propensity to fluctuation and change, like the light flowing through the forest, light purple, some subtle mist of green and blue with some red and yellow in there too- was to realize more than color as in coloring. It was some other medium altogether, a curious light lightness, for which the term polymorphous magical substance seems appropriate. Such a substance helped me get out of the spot-of-color-on-the-page idea of color and pushed me into thinking of the great conjuring tricks of shamans reported the world over, tricks in which a plasma-like sense of the being of being flourishes...
I take the fine meshed connectivity between bodies to be where song and the color spirit take us to and from where they emerge... intelligence working in a subterranean manner, like the signals that operate between the moon and the oceans..."
abridged notes from What Color is the Sacred by Michael Taussig and the words of J.N.B Hewitt
barn projection of The Color of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov. Inspired by an Iranian painting of two lovers with the same face, Parajanov chose to have Sofiko Chiaureli play both the part of artist and poet Sayat Nova as well as his love and muse.
The dissolution of boundaries is the communion of the divine work, the color, the polymorphous magical substance, the physical chemical psychological transformation.
burn. dissolve. seperate. combine.
(for the tarot enthusiasts... thoth Key-14 Art is the completion of Key-6 The Lovers also known as the divine twins)
february 02, 2021 - spirit meadow and the inverse field
"a state of mystical reverie incepted by vast abscenses." (notes from the library)
"Spirit Meadow is sometimes described as a four sided field bounded by the states of sleeping, waking, dreaming, and trance; it is simultaneously considered a place of embodied power and an actual place... serves as both a state of orientation for the dreamer and also the fecundated locus that gives birth to dreams themselves."
notes from Veneficium by Daniel A. Schulke
detail spirit meadow 2020. weaving. 32"x 88" silk, wool, cotton, linen
the topography of dreamscape, worship, labor.
vivid, scented, sacred.
a tangle of feast and famine.
a source of both delerium and ecstasy.
"a place that is not a place"
a pharmacopeia of possibility.
flight.
visions.
dying.
undying.
january 17, 2021 - ontological hocus pocus
one thing can be turned into another because at the deepest level they are really the same thing.
hoc est corpus neum. this is my body gnosis. knowledge chrysopoeia. transmutation into gold
january 09, 2021 - tracing a circle
the outline as holy gesticulation. (notes from the library)
"What is contemplation? The word derives from the root tem to cut."
(atom, anatomy, diatom, contemplate, temple, tome)
"To what severance, to what separation does the word allude? In order to understand the allusion, we should try to relive an experience half forgotten, something most precious lying hidden beneath the psychic rubbish that modern man heaps upon his heart. if we want to call that experience back to life, we should recall the sense of awe and wonder we feel in certain strangely meaningful places.
... In such places at such moments, a kind of reverence and fear even today finds access to the dulled senses of modern men. But what was such a feeling to a seer, to a priest-astronomer of say, 7000 BC? His fierce imagination was swayed and enthralled by the splendor of the revolving planets and of the constant stars upon the black vault of night. Those same essences that burned in the sky, he perceived when he hit upon some awesome, majestic spot. when in the outline of a rock, or of a tree, or of an animal he detected a luminous quality, full of freshness and grace, a swift delicate rhythm.
he recognized the essence of silvery Venus up in the sky. And thus in all the qualities of earthly things, he perceived the manifestation of some star. In fact the same essence was in turn a star, a mineral, a plant, an animal; especially certain arresting spots in the landscape were hallowed by it. They possessed that power stunningly and gloriously. The seer in such places felt the holy essence beckoning to him. Something from the depths of his being delicately leapt out towards it and communed with it. Our shabby modern language still reminds us of the intensity of those archaic events when it calls certain places "genial" : inhabited by an unworldly being, a genie.
"On such land the seer would feel called, impelled to perform a ritual, the natural response to a nod from above."
from Contemplation and Action in World Religions essay by Elémire Zolla
a phone recorded first draft of a color of a feeling of three walls, three windows and a host of apparitions. numen.