Tarot Keys 8 & 1 & 9

Posted on May 8, 2017 by janeadamsart

I did a Tarot reading last week by cutting my deck of 22 Major Arcana three times three, then turning over the top card of each pile. This orderly picture was not what I expected to see, because I’d caught a bad cold and was all over the place; so I studied it carefully to find its higher message or ‘music’. The first or centre one means Tifareth, with the Tree’s feminine and masculine pillars to the left and right. Here is my reflection:

Key 1, the Magician (Mercury) wears a casual red mantle (Mars) over the inner robe which is white, and he gardens roses and lilies. He conducts the force down from heaven to earth. To his left are the tools – wand, cup, sword, pentacle – J H V H. Above his head swirls the symbol of infinity. If Amnesty is a kind of I-am-nesty, he is the One-nesty: an ‘intelligence of transparency’. A turquoise snake girdles his waist to remind me of Key 13, the Reaper of life’s cycles. Serpent symbolism is cyclic and regenerates itself. The circle round his waist and 8 over his head, combine pleasingly; that which appears to be bounded (circle) is infinite inside. Be planted in your garden.

The Keys – Hermit and Soul Strength – to each side of the Magus indicate what he is doing just now. All three – representing the Kingdoms, animal, plant and mineral – gaze downward. The Hermit stands on a snowy mountain top like a lighthouse keeper. The Magus grows roses and lilies in the garden, while Mistress Soul Strength tames her alchemical Red Lion. The Lion is our vital force, the Magus is our conscious self and the Hermit is All-Consciousness.

The woman with the Lion is a female magus – a lemniscate swirls above the flowers in her hair. She wears the Magus’s shining white robe: the loose red mantle of Mars is now the power of her Hermetic Lion whom she tames by opening his mouth for him to roar TUNEFULLY. Binding him to her belly with a wreath of Magus roses, she is the higher Self/subconscious relationship. Giving birth through the lion’s mouth, she is particular with the offspring she lets out. She contains that power, like a breeze tossing birds on hilltop or green meadow. Behind them is a wide open landscape for long walks, and in the distance rises the Hermit’s mountain; the lion frisks his tail. The buttercup-yellow sky and background is (in Tarot) the colour of our sun or SOL.

Alchemy is called ‘the Sun’s work’. It moves through and transforms our bodies, with what we eat, and pushes daffodil, buttercup and primrose through the ground. Within the mountain the hidden veins of gold are ‘congealed sunlight’.

Annika and Aslan

The Hermit is ship’s mast, lighthouse column, SOLitude. The staff he holds is himself: the rod with which our Magus brings down the light. The Hermit IS ‘be still and know’. His cloak the colour of grey rocks conceals pure light. The lamp refracts and directs the beam. In the dark, where the other two are in full sunlight, he is the maker of Light. Light emerges through darkness.

The Hermit’s sign is Virgo. (Magus is Mercury and the sign of Strength is the Sun’s own – Leo). Virgo rules the dark labyrinth through which we process solar atoms into the blood stream. He is seeing right down into his own digestive process, and he wears a YOD cap whose colour has feminine sensitivity – blue, like the priestess. His hebrew letter YOD is the tenth: it carries the same meaning as linga in Sanskrit – the phallus as a kindler of light.

Contemplate these three Keys, two of them sunlight, one of them night. The edge of the Hermit’s key is Venusian green flecked with sunlight, like early leaves in spring. Darkness generates that power of Light. Any condition might be brought to realise so.

Alchemists call our gut the Black Dragon. Solar atoms (golden yellow) are diffused through its walls into the bloodstream by means of lacteals called chyle, the virgin’s milk. Red and white ‘soldiers’ (blood cells or corpuscles) then travel to the various cities and castles (organs) around the body where they are required. The old alchemical engravings are filled with these ideas. We may value also the interior splendour of our bodies: the hidden rainbow hues, the cosmic integrity and balance of each organ, vessel, enzyme and cellular memory in its place, the solar pulse and flow of life. Virgo keeps the SECRET things in order, like a secretary. The Hermit’s cap is phallic and feminine. YOD the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, is spermatic, a tiny fish: the seed of all the other letters. Reflect on the fluid mystery of masculinity and the androgyne; they put the king and queen to bed together in the Hermetica.

Conditions (and bad colds) pass, along with the idea of standing still in the flowery meadow; another temporary adjustment to the tides of tempo: a fruitful opportunity. In the darkest part of the body is confected the light of life. Life is something to live slowly, because no matter where or how I am, it is full with light, sound, space and sensation. This open tempo prevails, even within an accelerated human topsoil. I only have to stop and see and be it, and not be in a hurry. It produces an almost imperceptible yet delectable manna from heaven.

Leo, Mercury, Virgo; let these three add up to 18 which is 9, which always reduces to itself. 8 + 1 = 9

Astrologically, Key 1 is ‘Mercury’ wearing a red mantle of Mars – nowadays Mars is chugging along in Gemini, the sign ruled by Mercury. Mercury changed direction last week in Aries (ruled by Mars). It is now going Direct. Mercury and Mars are in each other’s signs – in mutual reception. So is it surprising to see their clarity in the oracle? What did surprise me was my transparency, because I felt blurred. I think I had asked, ‘what’s this about? What should I do?”

My ascendant (physical vehicle) is on the cusp Leo-Virgo; here, Mercury stands between them on the cusp, in beautiful white, red and gold; the signifier. Mercury is the mental body, and its vitality; Mars the physical body and its regulation. The Inner Plane or oracle reflects and advises the outer, and brings peace. Make way for the Higher Hermetic Mercury. He wears the Mars garment casually and he adapts the situation. The Higher Hermetic Mercury is a healing staff: Egyptian ankh, the Caduceus.

I find in my soul, a caduceus. It is made from ebony or yew, and it has subtle powers of alignment.

The mental body (Hermetic Mercury) is the template from birth for our volatile physical body. From its constancy come needful repairs and healing to physical tissues; but that depends on what we identify with. Many healers call upon the subtle template to assist them with repairs to the physical. Jesus did, without even thinking of it.

Yeshua, loaves and fishes

The highest Mercurial operation in Tarot is in key 6 the Lovers, whose sign is Gemini. Mercurius within their reciprocal space sets everything in its place, like a table laid for God.

Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

COPYRIGHT – All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2016. 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://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/

Heart Drop, the Lineage Tree and Time

Posted on December 19, 2012 by janeadamsart

This post begins with two oracles or “moments” in early December, for the Solstice. The three cards are “present”/centre, “past”/left and “future”/right.

It is also “sewn together” with my recent posts Sacred India Tarot Buddha 8,9.10 of Pentacles, Today is a Special Day and Bardo – a Buddha Atom Awakes on my primary blog. Here are the writings and reflections from my journal, behind them.

Tarot oracle 3 December 2012

12.21.6 is the pure hexagonal movement of the Seal of Solomon, my universal heart key. The 6 is half of 12, i.e. the date. Add the three numbers, they are 12

Seal of Solomon Cubed

Secret Dakini Oracle, 7 December 2012

The Heart Drop and the Lineage Tree fulfil the beauty. The Heart Drop is a landscape of silver rippled sand, a buddhist stupa and a ruby. It is in the tantra vajrayana tradition. The mind stops and enters yabyum. The Rainbow Buddha is in the Tree of Life. And Time’s wheel strikes the moment.

Oracle of solstice. Ora, oasis of solstice. This is profoundly real, striking the ora, hour, the moment through the clock’s face in the Real Aquarius.

Alignment flows the ease of being. The force is imperceptibly vast, like gravity. It seems likely that forces arraigned against it, suffer an increased violence and implosion. The core through evolutionary crossroads, is uncompromising. The root of the uncompromised, is … to Align. Turn. Submission. The Merciful. There are stars at night in the sands. The resistance is the old tribal vendettas and their murderous sentiment, brother against brother, civil war, humanquake.

What about the true Islam, invisible behind the televised tension? I … am.

View the present crisis historically, as a fence, a hurdle of an old world with the new. Solar atoms pass through it, like the current through the Buddha’s enlightenment.

13 December – in Nether Stowey, Somerset

My mother drew my attention to 12.12.12 yesterday, being absolutely unique and unrepeatable, as there is no 13^th month. So I did a piece on my blog about this – with some difficulty as the signal/internet dongle here comes and goes. Discovered it is strong in the morning, and gradually deteriorates.

With my cher ami, I have decided to stop trying to get things right, and certainly not to worry when I don’t. That just gives power to him and makes a loop, which he doesn’t want either. Nobody can be exactly right with another person. It’s just a fantasy, and a deconstructive one. This is a good realization. I always tried too hard and got entangled. Human beings are not “right”. We are just the way we are.

It is very cold in Nether Stowey, and I am having a good time with my parents, both nearly 90. Ah well now, a morning moment … the quiet. Lord thou art God – the Rose: the infinite moment inside the beautiful 12.12.12: my Tarot oracle 12.21.6 – Hanging Man inverts the World-way, and becomes the mutual understanding of the Lovers.

I am looking through the window, a skylight in a roof. I will not give power any more to other peoples’ opinions and closed houses. I accept them as they are, alongside the way I am.

I played some Bach on the piano, and I begin to remember Vera Moore a little. What she gave to notes and music lessons, was love, of a specially irresistible kind. I felt her loving presence, transcending every mess of humanity, in the muse; her voice, her laughter, her authority, her magnetic sparkle.

This moment is her receptacle. A sort of painting of her is inside me. I don’t know if it will happen. The moment of settlement is complete in itself, and all-extending.

Quantock Oak

14/15 December – The Ravening Curiosity

The devas are joyful, come what may.

When I was in the Quantocks above Nether Stowey, I moved at a fast lope down Bincombe because it was very cold. Through the soft brown autumnal drift of crisp leaves, my hips, knees and ankles danced loosely. All the small oaken witches danced. I became suddenly the silence. The silence of the wood sings in the blood and the bones. It is utterly quiet in the valley, as the descending waters begin to flow in their leafy bed. Further down, they arise through the ground, they sing and sound. Water is a miracle, the movement of the Stone, water of life.

I’m reading a book Into the Land of the Snows. It is by Ellis Nelson. It describes in one mountain scene, the exposure of a dead human to vultures – a Sky burial. The organs are taken out, the bones crushed and mixed with meal to make the feast clean, complete and appetizing. Life is renewed in death – another human gift. After reading this, I felt the iron piercing cold of the Himalaya, and the strange bastrikas which generate heat and keep the monks warm up there; and there came over me that purity – far from the ravening curiosity of the mind. In the stillness I see the shallow, ravening curiosity of the mind, for what it is; the trouble we all share and subscribe to. I am stepped just aside a little. I become the enigma of rocks, of valleys. Round yellow disks of the Sun – chakras – are placed on sensitive parts of the earth – my body.

Ramana’s presence bestowed peace – the felling of the curiosity. Buddha’s presence bestowed that same vital, ringing peace. Both carried their great quest through death’s door. It is night. I am back in London now. I am in bed and I hear the sounds of feet in the street and a distant fox yelping, as pulses without time. Solstice draws near – a solstice which tenders an infinite silent Life, the polar axis, a simplicity of being. There is an alteration in our composition.

The opportunity – in the atomic core of sinew, blood and bone – steps aside from the ravening curiosity which suddenly, subtly, is viewed objectively. The everyday mind is a ravening curiosity – my human curse and cross. As soon as it is seen, it is no longer so. Or it remains, out of habit, but compassion permeates it. Let it be. It seems to slough, like an old snake skin.

Dancer

The Buddha in Sacred India Tarot Disks 8, 9, 10: the teaching and the maha Samadhi and the Bardo – see my other blog. It is all linked, like the trees in the wood.

Buddha and Ramana, and all great sages, gathered crowds of devotees to their death. Maybe Jesus had witnesses other than the gospel scribes, who watched him pass in deep peace, and came away with that; but no one read or canonised them. This is quite a thought; that the death of Jesus was not an agony.

The deaths of Ramana, Buddha, Jesus, demonstrated an exquisite eliding of the planes of life and liberation. Their deaths were seamless with life. We attend a death as we attend a birth; the sliding water in the woods, the kites that soar in the sky, the atomic interchange of consciousness.

Some of my stories of the Watershed contain kernels of the unending Life. In one of them, the living white sunflowers ate the dead ones. (The story is at the end of that post.) A blue radiance came in through the window, and played around the noumenon. Seeing something like that just once or twice, changed my body’s depth-expectation for ever.

Lovers

Insight last week: in the capsule and story of me, I don’t perceive the truth of a person or of life. Same-ways, in the collective human capsule, how can our magnification of ourselves and guilt perceive truth? The truth is simpler than the pain we believe and measure.

Wisdom residing within our soul’s atoms unconsciously, and in just a few places awake, perceives the cosmos. The cosmos is what we are, as we wake from the dream. It is bound to be rather a surprise.

Solomon’s Seal and Flower of Life

15 December

My mother’s piano is tres sympathique. It was easy to imagine Vera Moore sitting with me, and what she would say about this note or that note, wrapping my fingers round it like a baby in a shawl. I remembered her way with poetic images, and her LOVE. That is the magic – her love. It makes me want to go on playing, and keeps me focused. I remembered her instruction to play what I am learning, like a chorale, without any inhibitions – sing it inside, with the touch. I shall put that postscript onto the MusicLessons with VM.

The young Vera

This is the time of the slide through solstice tipping point, which means different circlings to different soul types. I hear its simple silence through my antakharana valley. I am sleeping badly. I think this is due to an intensity in Yetzirah generally. The stillness stretches time – re-mind it under the “ravening curiosity”. It is always slipping through the valley. It never ends.

Today I have to do a Buddha SITA post. I shall parallel it – link it with last night’s piece, here.

I got a little download this morning, but didn’t manage to write it all down. The voice said “You know I would wish you to. When you have piano lesson, take your jacket off literally, and listen.”

There was something important before and after this, which slipped away.

The flavour of the woods, the winter ground, the wet leaves and thawing frost is the Buddha nature flowing through, and in my black “snowdrop” diary of 1988, is the bit about the passing lorry-cosmos – my actual “enlight-in” … drop some of that into the new SITA post.

My parents, the old people, still young at heart … this is sad. Their door closes. They are conditioned to see ONLY the mess which humans have made of things, and the inevitable demise of the race. I feel this is but a point of view, as I am consistently made aware of other wavelengths, other views. The endgame AND … the endgame contains something quite other which prevails, through that dream. “All is happening as it should.”

To be a Kabbalist is rare. My father is rather closed and opinionated in his way – at nearly 90. Pessimism. My mother has pessimism, some of it rubbed off from him; but she has a child inside who still wakes. His connections are intellectual. He worked on himself magnificently, all his life: Jiddu Krishnamurti was his teacher. Hers are organic, and spark me off. Anyway, I am so glad I spent this time with them. So are they. And we remember the older generation behind them, as we pour the whisky and wine.

Swan to be born, and Camel

We watched a film called “Weeping Camel” about the Gobi Desert nomads, and their tenderness with child and beast. They used the wind’s note through a stringed instrument to awaken a shaggy young camel’s maternal instinct to her abandoned calf who cried. They caressed the mother, while drawing the bow across the strings, like a mantra, to the exact vibration of the wind. It was a lullaby. In those wild parts of Mongolia, they use their vocal chords in this way too. She allowed at last, her homeless calf to suckle, and the bond was born. The camera team gave a TV and a disfiguring satellite dish to the family’s small son, who had seen one in the town, and begged for it. Progress is paradox.

Cosmos – the God-cosm – is rough and hard when we struggle against it, and gentle when we move with it.

During those long, slow breaths with the camels that evening, my childhood Himalayan hero died of a ripe old age in France. I found this out, two days later. I am growing up.

See again, the Sun’s silent veil of vibrant life; the pattern of the cloth upon the deep.

Swing & School photo, 1955

Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.

COPYRIGHT – 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://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/

Using Tarot to face Fear

Posted on December 1, 2012 by janeadamsart

by jane adams 1991

I am afraid above all else, of my own fear.

I am suffering from a personal-yesodic cyclone – shadow, projection and fear. It seems to be generated from my steward, desperately checking the wine in the cellar.

The Master of the house knows the wine. The steward goes to fetch it. Steward gets in a mess when he thinks he’s the Master.

My attitude to the teaching is arrogant. What the hell do I actually know about “the mars force?” I should read, study life with reverence, acknowledging my difficulty, not “oh-I-know-that”. I don’t know. If I did, I wouldn’t get in such a pickle.

An adept is a person whose body has reached the end of the path pictured in this Tarot Key – no.18, The Moon. When I asked Tarot a question about my fear, it showed me the beginning of the path; with Karmic law to the left and Probation to the right. It challenges my personal (moonish) attitudes and beliefs. It shows me how fearful I am, and that I am only starting out, and under supervision.

Justice past. Moon present. Temperance future. BOTA Tarot Keys

Fear is imagining that something in my environment is out of proportion.

Fear is fond of itself, so it fastens on any small factor and develops it out of proportion … whereas the one who comprehends and embodies the path of the Moon “is courageous because he has overcome fear. He never forgets the truth that all the activities of the universe are kept in perfect balance.” (Paul Foster Case)

This is a Testing Portal. Look at those two animals/dogs whose nice kennel has blown away – bewildered by the big bleak landscape and the Moon’s sharp rays. All the drops falling down on them seem to be disasters, but are in fact YODs of the eternal Life. The Companions of the Light seem to retire, eliciting the pilgrim’s solitude and effort. The Gate is two towers, as in tolkien. The opening between them goes beyond the present limitation.

Justice sits with scales and sword between two towers. The Archangel pours his severe elixir over two muddy creatures of Ezekiel, and seems to block the path to the Mountain.

Angels through Daat in the Tree of Life, cast shadows in Yesod. Daat represents the transpersonal unknown collective. Yesod is the sefira of personality – the local one, the filter. Here is Jacobs’ Ladder for thoughtful Kabbalists. To check this out in Zev ben Shimon Halevi’s books, visit kabbalahsociety.

Jacobs Ladder 1991, showing the dovetailing of the Sefiroth throughFour Worlds

In Jacobs Ladder overlapping the fourfold Tree of Life, Yesod (the personal) and Daat (the transpersonal) superimpose. In the Solar system, the planetary symbols of Yesod and Daat – the Moon and Pluto, the nearest and the furthest – are almost the same size.

Jacobs Ladder – relationships of emanation, creation, psyche and body

These ideas are technical, and they distract a little from my actual fear process, but – they are pictorial. Pictures and shapes reach far beyond words, so far as the subconscious is concerned. The goal is for me to understand/standunder the way things work, as I dust myself off and keep going.

A prime element in “Courage” is restraint from reaction. Reaction is an effort to arm myself. Non-reaction, waiting for a fuller information to emerge, feels naked and exposed. The shadow invades my mind and solar plexus.

The recent sun and moon-eclipse seemed to culminate to a “heavy”, in my case. The two dogs confront the towers of Gevurah and Hesed. The Archangel stands in front of the path Yesod-Tifareth, and the path of Awe behind it. Both Keys (18 and 14) suggest that the Sun is hidden for the moment, behind the imagined situation which casts a shadow. Realising this, puts my feet one two, on the path, walk.

Pisces is the ruler of Key 18 the Moon, and of the feet – the soles of the feet. I will feel the Sun on my shoulders of his own accord, as the projection melts. Face up, and walk into what scares me … right through it. Perspective changes as I move – it comes alive.

As I have Virgo-cusp rising, Pisces (Key 18) is my Shadow sign with Lilith in it, 7^th house. Confronting a partner, and that which comes to meet me, can be scary and painful, like reaching … and then my heart breaking open, grief. After a while, facing it directly begins to melt it away – the illusion and fearfulness in my mind. Grief is good, it cleanses.

The severe Guardian Angel in Key 14 is actually Michael, Archangel of the Sun. Equilibrium is the royal path to gnosis. It is the path of honesty – between Yesod and Tifareth.

So this is useful, for this morning. I feel stronger, thus more able to see. The visualising journey: here I am, a primitive human figure on the path just emerging from the primal pool. As I move along (hobbit feet!) towards the rather grim towers, the landscape is no longer a two dimensioned flat, it is incorporated, it comes to life; it wobbles and moves around and through me – into no thing: my transparency. The towers and the gap between them are sometimes four-square and sometimes one nearer and the other further. As I walk to become, it becomes me, and the fact settles. I am out of the doghouse!

There is a simple Douglas Harding experiment: to drive the world, the thingless Capacity for left and right, and marvel at what comes into view – but it requires careful attention on the road.

First-person drawings from “To Be And Not To Be” by Douglas Harding, illustrations JA

I see or sense just my feet on the path, one then the other, move, keep going. The forbidding curtain transforms to space.

from To Be & Not To Be by Douglas Harding, illustr.JA

sole, ear

So who are you then, whomever I meet and fear? You look like Mara’s face, in the SITA Buddha enlightenment card. Mara is the Buddha’s opponent – the force which tried to stop the enlightenment. So get it out, and look at the devil, sex and death. Through all the blandishment, Buddha sits under his tree and keeps touching the ground with his open hand … the same as FOOT – keep walking, feel the ground – (like baby Buddha did when he was born.)

Sacred India Tarot

Mara goes BLAH …

When I am tense and full of think, I am frightened of this stranger – Mara going BLAH – and above all, ASHAMED of admitting anything about it here, ashamed and scared of my panic and projection, lest it get worse. My panic and projection is a disguise – a whirling dust devil. But go to the root – does it really exist? No wonder it harries and drives me away from telling about it. Does it exist? Look at Mara in the drawing. Has he a body? Is he not just my scurrilous mind going WAH from behind a bush? Has he any root at all? Why, no ! just confusion. That is what he thrives on, when I let him settle in my city; and just about anything can inflate to look like him and drive me nuts. Confusion is the disorder. Confusion is the tension – giving it the power to damage and hijack my life.

This is seen in all the world’s trouble spots, cancelling Consciousness.

Well, good, good, keep going, this inner exercise will help my mind to clear. Mara forms a Grand Trine around Buddha, with a sly serpent and a siren woman. The Sacred India Tarot publisher put a bra on her, so this is the original. The serpent and the woman proceed through chaos, but the Buddha’s serenity is firmly established in the green and golden ground as Tifareth of Pentacles – his spine with the bodhi Tree of Life: the wheels of the cosmic Law. Death’s skull leers from behind the woman. Men consider Eve to be the gate of death because she gives them birth.

Sacred India Tarot

Do not let the metaphysic stray from the point. I am looking at Mara, my inflation of a magpie. It is important for me to check my euphorias and understand this entity in my being – who takes up residence in anyone who lets him in – this SQUATTER.

Look at the squatter, who does not own the house, and stops the owner from getting in.

This I find really terrifying. And see how the rats from it scurry over the world and build belief-houses occupied by squatters. Poor humans, we all suffer from this.

The squatter is the steward, getting carried away – a butler with megalomania.

Do not expect to overcome my terror at once, because here I am, in an opportunity to perceive and deal with it underneath the appearances. It is ancient. The light takes time to “incorporate”. Inevitably I end up thanking the Guardian Angel for showing me my fear, and what I learn from it, to attempt the next step. A mind like mine which teems with Providence and creativity, is vulnerable to occupation and entanglement at the lower levels. The steward gets in a tizzy.

The process is at last examined here. So now it can move on. I am frightened of occupation and hijack, and no wonder, as I am a sitting duck and make such a meal of it.

I Ching Wind over Mountain: Retreat

The correct attitude is lightness of heart and foot. It is proper for the sage on the mountain to retreat into his sky thoughts, when the small social climber becomes a nuisance. This reminds me of the Buddha card holding the Bowl higher than the begging pilgrim. He says No I don’t descend to your level, my compassion raises you to make the effort. He raises the high-jump bar. The small social climber isn’t even looking at the Bowl, he looks sideways at his own busy thoughts and industries. When we are afraid, we do not look ahead, we glance from side to side.

Sacred India Tarot

This Page of Pentacles/Disks has a beautiful composition – simplicity in itself. I am glad I am at last making some headway with this.

I am scared of updating my system – of things looking different, and having to learn them again; WordPress indicates it moves with the lion, leaving my snow leopard behind.

There are in the world, waves, ebbs and flows of tidal interest in whatever topic. An ear to the ground moves in circles, like the weather. Watch it drop maybe to the ground, and rise again, like a kite on the breeze. It is all illusion, illusory, because it DOESN’T EXIST! It is a cyber-thought. It is a way to communicate my thoughts at large, and to be able to see them and know that others can, too, and I theirs … we wave, as we weave. But materially my thoughts are on my sketchbooks and in my cupboard … for as long as I live.

Yesterday I went to tea with E, to help her start to organise her 80^th birthday fest in January. I also showed her how to get onto my blog. The Companions of the Light came to assist me in force! E has a Macbook the same as mine, but weirdly … slightly different. It turned out, she is on the latest Mountain Lion, so I got a demo on how my admin could look.

Keep on examining fear, as and when it pops up and starts to manage me. Fear is the coagulation of any undue emphasis in my thoughts. Fear is a williwaw, a vortex, a dust-devil of the sands of Ganga.

A Sacred India Tarot reading - from left to right, past, present moment (with its unfolding quality) and future.

A Sacred India Tarot reading – from left to right, past, present moment (with its unfolding quality j-h-v-h) and future.

And now a gallery of drawings-of-fear, done in 1987

fear 87/ja

fear – trying to meditate ’87ja

fear – utter fury

unfolding – persephone

fear – trying to be a buddhist

fear – raise my glass to it

transmuting fear – dragon song

trying to repair the I

I awake

black swans

I painted this after a visit to a stately home in Staines, in whose gardens brooded a Henry James ambiance. The coal black swans were enchanted princes. The rose garden on the right, channeled into a different perspective (with peacocks), was painted while listening to Bach B Minor Mass – the Credo seemed to fugue itself into a flowering, divine affirmation; a mandala … a furled thought form.

And now a few more swans:

Swan and Camel

The camel is a symbol for the Hebrew letter Gimel, (also a door) – related to Venus and birth. The camel carries the water through the deserts of the soul, and is considered a gomel chessed – an act of kindness.

Swan, cygnets and owl

The owl is ambiguous – looks like a predator, but protects. The owl as the bird of Pallas Athene, is “understanding” Often we fear the mysterious guardians of our soul.

Swan, Letter Beit

The Letter Beit – the second in the Hebrew alphabet – is “the Beginning.” We can learn a lot from the unhurried poise and soft yogic movement of the swan’s long neck. Beit contains the cosmic current which is Aleph, and is expressed through “the Intelligence of Transparency.” Beit is the concentration of what is born.

Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.