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 34: Sunrise

Day 34: Sunrise, gouache, 7x7 in., Otto

Alchemy, as well as numerous myths, distinguishes sunrise from dawn.  As daybreak, the latter is suggestive of the "first light" of spiritual, symbolic or psychic illumination, while sunrise evokes its infusion with the fire, blood and energetic heat of lived experience.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 33: Dawn

Day 33: Dawn, gouache, 7x7 in., Otto

Whether alluding to the incipient universe, or to the momentary flicker of an idea or feeling in its earliest apprehension; whether naming the interlude of communion engendered by the pristine clarity and shared focus of the whole of creation poised at the brink of sunrise, dawn evokes annunciation, beginning, approach, coming into being.

-ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 32: Spark

Day 32: Spark, interference acrylic, 7x7 in., Otto

The origins of the word spark attest to its fertile, spermlike quality, as well as its animating, vital essence.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 31: Fire

Day 31: Fire, gouache, 7x7 in., Otto

Visible fire gradually intimated an invisible fire animating our substance and manifesting in the multiple flickers and excitations of psychic life.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 30: Ice

Day 30: Ice, collage, 6x6 in., Otto

In psychology, [ice would be] the dividing line between the conscious and the unconscious.

The Book of Symbols, Day 29: Snow

Day 29: Snow, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Snow creates simple beauty and activates fantasies of transformation.

- 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 25: Lightning

Day 25: Lightning, collage, 6x6 in., Otto

Sometimes signaling the advance of high winds and violent storms and followed by deafening peals of thunder, lightning evokes unexpected, over-powering shifts in the physical or psychic landscape.

- C.G. Jung

The Book of Symbols, Day 24: Thunder

Day 24: Thunder, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

Always ambivalent, the gods of thunder and lightning could bring either death and destruction or fertility and new life to humankind and its surroundings.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 23: Storm

Day 23: Storm, collage,6x6 in., Otto 

Symbolically storm evokes psychic tension gradually building to the bursting point, or more sudden in-breaking of highly charged transpersonal energies.

- 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 19: Sky

Day 19: Sky, collage, 6x6 in., Otto

Image of cerulean infinity, sky intimates both unbounded freedom and unearthly void.

- 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

Herzog's Cave Documentary is Unforgettable

...directed by Werner Herzog is an absolutely must-see documentary filmed in 3-D about a 32,000 year old cave recently discovered (1994) in southern France.  The film is currently showing in just 3 cities in the U.S.  You guessed it, NYC, LA, and good ole Chicago.  You will never see anything like this again in your life, guaranteed.  Herzog is the only one who could ever have filmed this, as you will see.  Make sure the theater is offering it in 3-D, no matter what the cost or trouble to get there - it will be well worth it.  

I'd love to hear your response...

The Book of Symbols, Day 16: Flood

Day 16: Flood, collage, 6x6 in., Otto

Floods are especially frightening because they intimate unpredictable forces of nature within ourselves, times of great stress and change, when consciousness can be submerged by flooding anxieties and affects.

- 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 12: Lake

Day 12: Lake, collage, 6x6 in., Otto

Standing at water's edge and gazing out over the surface, we pause and give way to dream, reflection, imagination and illusion, to other worlds below and beyond ourselves, making lake symbolically the entry, for good or ill, into pysche's unconscious dimensions.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 11: River

Day 11: River, collage, 6x6 in., Otto

River is vital fluidity, the rivers move through both the upper world and the lower world, over ground and underground, inside and outside...

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 10: Ocean

Day 10: Ocean, collage, 6x6 in., Otto

Ancient and primal, the ocean is our mother of mothers, the great round within whole fluid containment 
life began and from whole fertile precincts the first bold pioneers scuttled out upon the sand.

- 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

The Book of Symbols, Day 8: Eclipse

Day 8: Eclipse, collage, 6x6 in., Otto

Eclipse conveys the idea of the ego being overshadowed by the unconscious 
or
the ego itself 
blocking the essential source of illumination.

- ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 7: Crescent Moon

Day 7: Crescent Moon, collage, mixed media, 6x6 in., Otto

The crescent reminds us of the mortality of everything that begins life, the transience of everything that comes into consciousness.

 - ARAS

The Book of Symbols, Day 6: Moon

Day 6: Moon, prismacolor pencil, 6x6 in., Otto

And still, in the night sky, her "same clear glory extends for ten thousands miles."   - Tu Fu, Full Moon