The Tree of My Life, Currently

Palm Tree Construction, found objects, 9x6x5 in., Otto 

Yes, silly me as a tree from the Archetypal Stages of the Great Round of Mandala workshop I'm facilitating.  We're on Stage 7 Squaring the Circle or Owning the Light and one of the focus points was a tree as self image.

It seemed to tie together all the projects I'm involved with:  the mandala group, the symbol a day, and all the fabric and sewing of clothes.  Of course, I didn't realize that at the time of creating it - I was just going with my inklings.

The Book of Symbols, Day 56: Kabbalistic Tree

Day 56: Kabbalistic Tree, mixed media, 8x6 in., Otto

Perhaps the central teaching of this profound symbol is that there is a single structure that underpins all things...It is ultimately about the many levels, visible and invisible, that connect the primordial unity with the reality we experience every day.  

The Kabbalah teaches that this divine system has an order and a beauty of its own, and that by coming to know and align ourselves with it, we may promote greater harmony both within ourselves and in what is around us. 

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 40: Stone

Day 40: Stone, collage, mixed media, 7x7 in., Otto

Compared to our brief human life span, stone becomes a symbol of endurance; indeed it suggests the concept of eternity.  Yet the common stone surrounds us everywhere, and we give it little value.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 39: Darkness

Day 39: Darkness, collage, mixed media, 7x7 in., Otto

But if one consciously enters into the Darkness and endures its enshroudment, if catlike, one learns to see and hear acutely in its recesses, the darkness will gradually reveal the treasures concealed there.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 38: Night

Day 38: Night, collage, mixed media, 7x7 in., Otto

Like a finely woven shawl, night enfolds in the interval between dusk and dawn.  Bringing silence, healing and a cool hiatus from the sun's burning heat and light, night evokes the restorative darkness and repose, the veiling of sunlike consciousness that follows upon the tumultuous splendor and striving of day.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 37: Sunset

Day 37: Sunset, collage, mixed media, 7x7 in., Otto

Every evening the sun sinks toward the horizon, meeting earth with heaven, and slipping under the boundary of our perspective, carries with it something of ourselves into the netherworld of imagination.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 36: Dusk

Day 36: Dusk, collage, mixed media, 7x7 in., Otto

Dusk signifies the evening of the day and the evening of life, or the evening of time as the "twilight of the gods" when earth's light is swallowed.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 35: Solstice

Day 35: Solstice, gouache, 7x7 in., Otto

Rather, solstice reflects a numinous simultaneity of the sun's standing at an extreme and turning into the opposite, a divine rotation of ascent and descent that makes of light and darkness one.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 28: Fog

Day 28: Fog, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Symbolically, the world of clear rational thought gives way to dreaminess, ambiguity, a kind of knowing that is more nuanced, less absolute...

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 27: Dew

Day 27: Dew, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Not merely an intellectual form of understanding, but incorporating feeling values, the "dew" alluded to psyche's capacity to freshen and reanimate the personality desiccated by unconsciousness of its soul-stuff.  The illumination of these contents, like glistening drops of dew, represents the "moisture that heralds the return of the soul."

- C.G. Jung

The Book of Symbols, Day 26: Rainbow

Day 26: Rainbow, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Myth has portrayed the rainbow as the highway over which pysche's supernal emissaries bring their messages to consciousness.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 22: Rain

Day 22: Rain, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

The water upon which all life depends descends to earth as raindrops both gentle and torrential.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 21: Wind

Day 21: Wind, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

On wind we have projected the unpredictable factor that moves us and carries us, sometimes directing our course or forcing us to change course.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 20: Cloud

Day 20: Cloud, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Because of clouds hovering between heaven and earth, it has been an image that conveyed the hiddenness as well as the manifestation of the divine.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 18: Air

Day 18: Air, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Air in motion - inhalation and exhalation, the potency of wind - captures our imagination.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 17: Bubble

Thursday, May 11, 2011

Day 17: Bubble, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

The bubblelike enclosure of the figure excludes all references to the world beyond and imparts a timeless, supernatural quality.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 15: Waterfall

Day 15: Waterfall, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

"Amid the waters, under the high cliff...even the sluggish soul can rise to the noblest concerns"

- Petrarch

The Book of Symbols, Day 14: Whirlpool

Day 14: Whirlpool, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

The vortex produced by these currents can appear to create an aperture, falling away into immeasurable depths, sucking all things into the void and then disgorging them again.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 13: Pond

Day 13: Pond, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Different from an ocean or a great river, the scale of a pond can be encompassed by the human imagination, and...like us, live and die.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 9: Comet

Day 9: Comet, prismacolor pencil, gel pen, 6x6 in., Otto

What we now know about comets is that seemingly random, they actually make cyclical returns; perhaps the changes they portend can all be said to have continuity, to be part of a larger pattern.

- ARAS