caves, the Forms + deep water

In Romanticism, nautical allusions serve as one of the major metaphors for the life journey.

The Raft of the Medusa  
Théodore Géricault 1819

Campbell somewhere suggests each find a single fragment from the pile of shards left in the ruins of the mythic world, a fragment that speaks to you, and then play and work with it.

Novalis: “The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet” 

Campbell, in The Hero’s Journey interprets the outer world as the world of tradition - that which can be taught – and the inner world as your response to it – an interesting view of the poet’s insight into the relation of subject and object.

The soul is the realm of reconciliation of those two parts of the world – inner and outer – that belong together, but have been falling apart. Novalis continues: “The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.” The psyche is a place of potential growth, and the more the inner psychic and the outer cosmic world overlap, the more we gain ground both in the physical and psychic dimension - and the more we are in balance.

The inner and outer worlds are identical anyway; we’re just experiencing the one world in two dimensions. The mystical way of experiencing dissolves the categories of inner and outer. There is only one cosmos, one “undifferentiated consciousness” (Campbell), but it is explored in different ways, by looking inside, or looking outside. An artist has to explore both, because, as Max Beckmann puts it, the purpose of the arts is to make visible the invisible, through reality as the actual mystery of existence.

Where Phantoms Reign:
Myth and Nature in Modern Art
by Martin Weyers published on August 18, 2008 

http://www.martinweyers.com/int_intro_frames.htm 

http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php?categoryid=37&blogid=7

 

Bachelard water + dreams

To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water.  

 Bachelard Introduction W+D

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth. 

 Bachelard Poetics of Reverie Ch. 2, 

penetrating veils + blood

What lies beneath is sheathed in the visceral realm 
Real but largely Invisible
still Self but Other
Anonymous but Singular
Unrecognisable but clearly Me.

water & the Todtenbaum

"I always feel at home in a water environment and have grown to appreciate the vital role that water plays in my existence. As a living substance that is the foundation of all life processes on Earth, water is not an ordinary commodity but something marvelous, magical and sacred"

Altman, Sacred Water: The Spiritual Source of Life (Mahwah, NJ: Hidden Spring, 2002)

Bachelard remarks that "water, the substance oflife is also the substance of death for ambivalent reverie" It is also for him a Jungian archetype enabling us to imagine that the  "dead person is given bacl to his mother to be born again"

In is novel Chevengur, the Russian writer Andrei Platonov talks about a "poetics of water" aligned with Bachelard's own imagery.

According to Jung, the image of the Todtenbaum, the death tree,  is associated with the myth of water burial, in which the dead person is imagined to be reborn in the future.  In his dissertation on Platonov, Waterworks: Andrei Platonov's Fluid Anti-Utopia, Seungdo Ra, refers to the Todtenbaum and the Native American practice of burying their dead by either tying stones to the deceased's body and sinking it in a lake, river, or spring, or of setting the body afloat in a canoe. 

"... they believed that the canoe is the womb of the water goddess from which the sould would be re born in a future life. Similarly, in Kotlovan, Platonov shows us a ritual of water burial wehre the kalaks are floated away on a raft along the river. "

A dugout or dugout canoe is a boat which is basically a hollowed tree trunk. Other names for this type of boat are logboat and monoxylon. Monoxylon (μονόξυλον) (pl: monoxyla) is Greek -- mono (single) + xylon (tree) -- and is mostly used in classic Greek texts. Some, but not all, pirogues are also constructed in this manner.
Dugouts are the oldest boats archaeologists have found. In Germany they are called Einbaum (English translation: One tree). This is probably because they are made of massive pieces of wood, which tend to preserve better than, e.g., bark canoes. Einbaum dug-out boat finds in Germany date back to the Stone Age. Along with bark canoe and hide kayak, dugout boats were also used by indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Einbaum

History

The design and manufacture of kayaks have gone through many stages over the centuries, from primitive, handmade crafts used for survival to mass-produced sporting boats. Archeological evidence shows that kayaks were used at least 2,000 years ago by Eskimos for transportation, hunting, and fishing. Eskimo kayaks typically weighed about 26 pounds (12 kg), were 18-20 feet (5.5-6 m) long and 20 inches (51 cm) wide. The Eskimos lashed bone or driftwood into frames with seal sinew or gut. Seal or caribou skins were stripped of hair, tied together, and soaked in water before being tightly stretched over the frame. The skins stretched taut as they dried. Seams were waterproofed with boiled seal oil or caribou fat. Limitations such as the availability, shape, and size of natural materials did not hinder the grace and durability of the Eskimo kayak. Modern kayak designers and manufacturers are indebted to these early engineers both for the concept of the kayak as a low, covered boat as well as for specific features which make the boat so seaworthy.
By A.D. 900, kayaks were being used in Europe. New designs in frames and coverings addressed the need to easily transport the kayak over land. One of these designs was a revolutionary collapsible kayak model called a foldboat which was invented in Germany in the 1800s. The foldboat used a rubberized canvas outer layer stretched over a folding tubular frame. The foldboat could be disassembled and carried in just two suitcases.
More recently, the primary use of kayaks has shifted from hunting and transportation to recreation and competitive sport. Kayaking for recreation began on rivers and lakes in the late 1800s.

http://www.answers.com/topic/kayak#Wooden_kayaks

UNDERGROUND WATER
Blue Holes and Old Canoes
http://www.blueholes.org/The%20Rob%20Palmer%20Blue%20Holes%20Foundation/Archeological%20finds.html
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzwj6xH-uw4

Sub - Urban Adventures

http://www.sub-urban.com/megatron/
http://www.sub-urban.com/crystalphallus/
http://www.sub-urban.com/deepochre/
http://www.sub-urban.com/underground.shtml

Alex Wise images - also underground river and mental hospital Tas
http://www.alexwisephotography.net/blog/tag/urbex/

symbiosis

"Anytime you work with the body, you are also working with the mind and the energy system—which is the bridge between body and mind"  Joan Shivarpita Harrigan, Ph.D director of Patanjali Kundalini Yoga Tennessee

http://www.experiencefestival.com/consciousness_-_philosophy

imago

Theories on art and literature show that the artist is a medium of his own subconscious

 

"One has only to know and trust, and the ageless guardians will appear. Having responded to his own call, and continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold, the hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side... the soul under the tutelage of the supernatural."  Joseph Campbell

 
 Reflections on visual language 

"The integrated view of the world represented by the mandala, while long embraced by some Eastern religions, has now begun to emerge in Western religious and secular cultures. Awareness of the mandala may have the potential of changing how we see ourselves, our planet, and perhaps even our own life purpose."
(From Mandala: Journey to the Center, by Bailey Cunningham)

the water dreamer

The sea kayak in the arctic, Canada, and British Columbia has a history which spans at least 5,000 years. "It is a fitting tribute to the arctic peoples, builders of the first sea kayak that it survives today as the worlds most popular self propelled watercraft."

The birth place of the kayak was almost certainly the inhospitable coast of Siberia. We know that the peoples who eventually settled the Americas crossed from Siberia sometime during the last Ice age when the land or ice bridge "Berengia" connected the two continents.http://www.coastmountainexpeditions.com/?q=node/141 
Siberia & the Aleutian Islands, the birth place of the sea kayak - “qajaq” .

The oldest known archaeological evidence of a kayak goes back 2,000 years B.P. and there is inferential evidence dating it back another 2,000 years. However, given the reality of surviving the harsh environment, arctic peoples most likely always had some way of getting onto the water to hunt or fish. An 8,000 year existence for the kayak is possible, but we will probably never know for sure.

c o m p a s s i o n

http://www.teamuse.com/article_020102.htmlhttp://www.teamuse.com/article_020102.html 

The original Sanskrit word is 'karuna,' which holds within itself traces of the fragment 'ru,' meaning to weep. While the Oxford dictionary describes compassion as pity bordering on the merciful, karuna is actually our ability to relate to another in so intense a measure that the plight of the other affects us as much as if it had been our own.

Quite unlike conventional love (Sanskrit: priya, kama or trishna), which is rooted in dualistic thinking and is egoistic, possessive and exclusive, in contrast to the all-encompassing nature of compassion. The root meaning of karuna is said to be the anguished cry of deep sorrow and understanding that can only come from an unblemished sense of oneness with others. 

 

Kuan Yin is the Chinese version of the male god Avalokiteshvara, whom the ancient texts eulogize as the patron deity of compassion. It is fascinating however to observe that nowhere in India (where he originated) or Tibet (where he remains the most popular deity) is the latter ever deified as a female figure. In China too, his worship began as a male god

Though often images are encountered, which show her sporting a moustache, emphasizing masculinity; this is negated by the softness of her demeanor. Can anything be more subtly female than her graceful poise - modest and inward looking, yet potent enough to generate and compassionately nourish the whole outside world?

"The divine feminine cannot be suppressed for long. In China, it emerged by the transformation of the male into the female," only god (or the goddess) knows how it will transpire in other cultures. Palmer, Martin and Jay Ramsay, with Man-Ho Kwok. Kuan Yin Myths and Prophecies of the Chinese Goddess of Compassion: London, 1995.

http://www.teamuse.com/article_020102.html

Often Quan Yin is shown pouring a stream of healing water, the "Water of Life," from a small vase. With this water devotees and all living things are blessed with physical and spiritual peace.

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

- Albert Einstein

Oceanus

explorer's wake

"The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades." Joseph Campbell

Oceanus, one of the Titans is sometimes considered to be at the origin of all things. This is the god of the backward-flowing river Ocean, which bounds the earth and from which all rivers flow and every sea, and all the springs and wells. In order to reach the Underworld it is necessary to cross this river

For the realization of ultimate truth, you have to pay the price ~ and the price is nothing but dropping the ego. So when such a moment comes, don't hesitate. Dancingly, disappear... with a great laughter, disappear; with songs on your lips, disappear. Osho 

renting the veil ~ ascent + descent

There are five rivers. Styx, Lethe, Acheron, Cocytus and Phlegethon.
Styx the river that separates the world of the living and the world of the dead. It is said to wind around Hades nine times.
Lethe  one of the five rivers of Hades. The dead had to drink from it to forget about their lives on earth.
Cocytus river of lamentation flows into Acheron. The unburied were forced to wander around its banks for years as they weren't allowed to continue any further than this without a burial.
Phlegetho, river of fire,is one of the lesser known of the myriad rivers in Hades.
Acheron is the river of woe. The shades are ferried across this river by Charon. The path to the underworld has been described as the one that leads down to the river of woes, Acheron, pouring into Cocytus, the river of lamentation.

Elysium lay somewhere near the river Oceanus. Oceanus (Greek: Ὠκεανός, lit. "ocean") was believed to be the world-ocean in classical antiquity, which the ancient Romans and Greeks considered to be an enormous riverocean-stream at the Equator in which floated the habitable hemisphere encircling the world.

Greek mythology often located the Elysian Fields, home of the blessed dead, in the moon.

• In Gaul, the crescent moon stood for the druidic Diana.
• There has "always" been a belief that the phases of the moon influenced events on earth; not only the ebb and flow of the tides but also the rising, and falling of sap in plants; haircuts and bloodletting were scheduled with reference to the lunar cycle.
• "Moon-herbs" (plants which bloom at night) were prescribed for gynecological disorders.
• Christian iconography shows the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, is often likened to the moon or portrayed as standing or enthroned on a lunar crescent
• In the Jewish world, the moon is linked not only with the nocturnal or the other worldly but also, as in other traditions, with the feminine
• In the Basque language, the words for "deity" and "moon" were the same.
• Sioux Indians called the moon "The Old Woman Who Never Dies".
• The Gaelic name of the moon, gealach, came from Gala or Galata, original Moon-mother of Gaelic and Gaulish tribes.
• The Moon-goddess created time, with all its cycles of creation, growth, decline, and destruction, which is why ancient calendars were based on phases of the moon and menstrual cycles.
• The full moon is said to reflect heat of 200 degrees Fahrenheit across 220,000 miles with an increase over the "entire globe. . . to about two-hundredths of a degree."
  

Sea and river gods

excavating the unconscious

loʊɡɒs

A common language in tattered fragments, meaning strewn through time, retrieved by trawling the layers for relics folded and folded

A perfect picture, Socrates says, will produce good communication. According to Plato, in contemplation there always exists an affinity to the visual  experience.  ... the visual experience was seen as a new light, and images were considered "the main roads to cognition."

"According to Damascus, the image (icon) 'reaches farther than the perception of the human eye in natural experience, it shows what lies beyond the realm o f visual experience.' The icon reveals more than what can be seen in nature; it makes us "see" the invisible. And since it represents the invisible, its purpose is to attain this goal: ' ... when the Invisible One becomes visible to flesh, you may then draw a likeness of its form .. "

Alexandrakis p 83

ei·do·lon  (-dln)

n. pl. ei·do·lons or ei·do·la (-l)

1. A phantom; an apparition.

2. An image of an ideal.

---

[Greek eidlon, from eidos, form; see weid- in Indo-European roots.]

a room of One's Own & Other spaces

 Hyungkoo Lee ~ Korean artist from the Venice Biennale, 2007


There are spaces that invite the Other 

"Coleridge certainly did not mean, when he said that a great mind is androgynous, that it is a mind that has any special sympathy with women; a mind that takes up their cause or devotes itself to their interpretation. Perhaps the androgynous mind is less apt to make these distinctions than the single-sexed mind. He meant, perhaps, that the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided."

woolf: http://listentogenius.com/recordings/RoomofOnesOwn.mp3
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.

You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.

Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?

True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?

Yes, he said.

And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?

Very true.

And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?

No question, he replied.

To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

http://listentogenius.com/recordings2/TheRepublic.mp3 

"... all perception and cognition is not purely objective, it is also subjectively conditioned. The world exists not merely in itself, but also as it appears to me. The excessive development of the introverted standpoint in consciousness, for instance, does not lead to a better or sounder application ... The really fundamental subject, the Self, is far more comprehensive than the ego, because the former also embraces the unconscious, while the latter is essentially the focal point of consciousness. The individual Self is a portion, or excerpt, or representative, of something universally present in all living creatures."
Types: http://listentogenius.com/recordings/General-Description-Types.mp3

a frame for silence

Compel to silence; to cause to be still; to still; to hush.

To put to rest; to quiet.

A state of being absent or withdrawn from a place or from companionship; -- opposed to presence.

The state of quality of being calm; quietness; tranquillity; self-repose.
Existing.  Being. Free from sound or noise; absolutely still; perfectly quiet. A holding; restraint; custody; guard; charge; care; preservation.  Not speaking for a time; dumb; mute; silent. To deliver from agitation or excitement; to still or soothe, as the mind or passions.  Motionless; at rest; quiet; as, to stand still; to lie or sit still.  To appease; to calm; to quiet, as tumult, agitation, or excitement; as, to still the passions.  Not speaking; indisposed to talk; speechless; mute; taciturn; not loquacious; not talkative. Keeping at rest; inactive; calm; undisturbed; as, the wind is silent. Having no effect; not operating; inefficient. That which is silent; a time of silence.

Sometimes in the open you look up
where birds go by, or just nothing,
and wait. A dim feeling comes
you were like this once, there was air,
and quiet; it was by a lake, or
maybe a river you were alert
as an otter and were suddenly born
like the evening star into wide
still worlds like this one you have found
again, for a moment, in the open.

 
Something is being told in the woods: aisles of
shadow lead away; a branch waves;
a pencil of sunlight slowly travels its
path. A withheld presence almost
speaks, but then retreats, rustles
a patch of brush. You can feel
the centuries ripple generations
of wandering, discovering, being lost
and found, eating, dying, being born.
A walk through the forest strokes your fur,
the fur you no longer have. And your gaze
down a forest aisle is a strange, long
plunge, dark eyes looking for home.
For delicious minutes you can feel your whiskers
wider than your mind, away out over everything.
  William Stafford
 

Not disturbed by noise or agitation; quiet; calm; as, a still evening; a still atmosphere. Not effervescing; not sparkling; as, still wines. Freedom from noise; calm; silence; as, the still of midnight. To this time; until and during the time now present; now no less than before; yet. Undisturbed by passion or emotion; not agitated or excited; tranquil; quiet in act or speech. To make calm; to render still or quiet, as elements; as, to calm the winds.

   

chiron ~ trawls the waters

 exquisite pain ~ existential longing, yearning, nostalgia for un-remembered places

Chiron, the Wounded Healer, was originally a god of healing. In later mythology, as a teacher of heroes and an oracle, he survived as one of the centaurs. Chiron stands for the deep karmic wounds in the subconscious that we have come to this life to heal. Chiron, immortal son of Kronos (Saturn), governs healing and relationships; he teaches us, as he did with Jason, Achilles and Heracles, to fulfil our ultimate potential. Chiron taught his secrets to Asclepios, the divine healer, but in modern astrology he profoundly stands for the deep wounds we have brought into this life to be healed – and so to enable us to heal others. His emblem represents holistic understanding. The area of the chart in which Chiron is located is the focus of the karmic healing process, which is often very painful.

Chiron shakes us according to our character, as revealed through the symbols of the natal chart. A person with strong Mars will turn to violent action, or aggressive behaviour to avoid the truth; someone with strong Venus will smother consciousness in pleasure; one who has a powerful Moon may become drug or alcohol affected; Jupiter will turn to gambling; Saturn to overwork and so on for all the planetary types. The key to this is understanding the opportunity to reach a new level of consciousness, so that our own wounds may be healed and so that we may become a healing beacon in our own communities.

the Wound contains a Gift and that the Healing journey is the process of discovering that Gift. The Wound is Healed when the Gift is embraced

Sappho ~ http://listentogenius.com/recordings/Songs-Innocence-Experience.mp3

Blake ~ http://listentogenius.com/recordings/Songs-Innocence-Experience.mp3

navigating chance tides

The current of Flow (identified by Csikszentmihalyi ) that underscores the creative process is an intangible but very real principle in the making process for any artist. However we acknowledge its power, it is like a tide, a serendipitious, synchronicitous pull that always rests just at the floor of our subconscious and connects us with timelessness, ecstasy and serenity - states once know, are the only ones worth pining after. Rumi's well.
  

In Chinese, pure awareness is called Wu Chi.  It is the infinite, formless place just before all meaning and form.  The place from which all creativity springs. When you are connected with Wu Chi you are in the Tao. When you are in the Tao creativity naturally happens. WU CHI, emptiness, is symbolized by the empty circle, and TAI CHI, plenitude, is symbolized by the ancient Chinese yin/yang fractal:


In Jung's introduction to The Book of Changes  he says "[Our] science ... is based upon the principle of causality, and causality is considered to be an axiomatic truth. But a great change in our standpoint is setting in. What Kant's Critique of Pure Reason failed to do, is being accomplished by modern physics. The axioms of causality are being shaken to their foundations: we know now that what we term natural laws are merely statistical truths and thus must necessarily allow for exceptions ... If we leave things to nature, we see a very different picture: every process is partially or totally interfered with by chance, so much so that under natural circumstances a course of events absolutely conforming to specific laws is almost an exception. 

" synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers. 


The ancient Chinese mind contemplates the cosmos in a way comparable to that of the modern physicist, who cannot deny that his model of the world is a decidedly psychophysical structure. The microphysical event includes the observer just as much as the reality underlying the I Ching comprises subjective, i.e., psychic conditions in the totality of the momentary situation. Just as causality describes the sequence of events, so synchronicity to the Chinese mind deals with the coincidence of events."
Cage used the I Ching in his creative process  Eno's Oblique Strategies

worth a read ... http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2007/01/before-and-afte.php

Merce Cunningham and his use of chance as a choreography device