Spirit Communication - Article by Trish and Robb MacGregor

My friends Trish and Robb MacGregor recently posted an article in their Blog about synchronicity and spirit communication.  The MacGregors are  professional writers and researchers of synchronicity and the paranormal, as well as being well known fiction writers.  I've been following their wonderful Blog for years, and it never ceases to fascinate and inform me.

I've been interested in Spiritualism and synchronicity myself for many years, as I guess this Blog demonstrates. I have come to feel that we are blessed with guidance often, and often in the form of synchronicities.  Last summer, for example, I took a trip to deal with the loss of my brother and mother.  It was my intention to have a reading at Lilydale, the Spiritualist center in western New York I have so often visited in the past.

En route, on a whim, I decided to  visit  Camp Chesterfield, an old Spiritualist community near Mound State Park I had heard of.  I finally found it, and the energy of the land was breathtaking...but I had turned up at sunset, and I realized I would have to get a hotel if I wanted to check out the historical Camp the following day.  Just as I was driving out a group of people walking on the grounds invited me to join them......so I parked the car and did.  It turned out one of the mediums, Normandi Ellis, was finishing her book on deadline, and was desperate to acquire illustrations that had to go to the publisher ASAP.  I had the computer program and photoshop skills to do that for her, and so, I had a place to stay and introduction to the Camp, and she got her images in on time.  While there I was given a reading - and one of the first things the medium said, knowing nothing about me at all, was that "Florence and Glenn say hello"!  The healing and comfort I sought was given before I reached New York.

 One I've probably shared too many times concerns a poetic synchronicity that occurred  a decade ago while driving across the country, and stopping to visit my grandmother's grave en route in a little town called Dewit, Nebraska.  I called it "Angels in Nebraska", and it was a magical event that I like to believe was a communication from my beloved grandmother. The MacGregors feel that many synchronistic events represent a form of symbolic spirit communication.  Mediums and Spiritualists often say the same.  

I'm pleased Trish and Robb gave me permission to share the article below.

Synchro Secrets Blog  
by Trish and Robb MacGregor

June 7, 2016

http://blog.synchrosecrets.com/

Every day, spirits communicate with ordinary people, usually the loved ones they left behind but also with strangers. They do this by using anything they can to seize our attention – sounds and scents, objects, places, patterns, dreams and visions, signs and symbols, animals, clusters of numbers, names, birth dates. You don’t have to be a medium to converse with them. You don’t need a medium to interpret what they say. You can avail yourself of this secret language with simple, effective methods.

The language of the dead is synchronicity and it’s accessible to anyone. You might be thinking of your deceased father, wishing he were still alive, and suddenly catch the scent of pipe tobacco wafting through your room. Your dad used to smoke a pipe. There is no cause and effect between your thought and the aroma of tobacco. However, you’re awarethat the coincidence is meaningful. This synchronicity, conveyed through a scent, not only seizes your attention, but provides comfort and reassurance that your father’s spirit is alive and well in the afterlife and may be reaching out to you.

Suppose that while you’re thinking of your deceased mother, you request that she communicate with you? Perhaps you even speak to her out loud. You might be leaving for work and set the intention that the next thing you hear will be your mother communicating with you in some way. When you’re in the car, you turn on the radio and the first song you hear is about a mother reaching out to a lost daughter. Goose bumps erupt on your arms. You’re struck by the sheer odds that out of all the songs that exist, that one plays in the immediate aftermath of your request.

One evening before a meditation class, Trish asked her parents to communicate with her. She set an intention. And she summoned strong desire for this to occur. Midway through the meditation class, she opened her eyes and saw her parents in a corner of the room. They were laughing, vibrant, younger, and were directing a group of people into a theater. When they realized that she saw them, they faded away.

Time and again we have found that synchronicity is the vital component. But to fully engage with our deceased loved ones, we can become active participants by using any number of effective methods: awareness and recognition, intention, summoning through desire, requesting, and incubation. In the ancient practice of dream incubation, we “plant a seed” in the mind in order for a specific dream topic to occur. Incubation is often used for guidance in solving a problem.

When Rob’s mother recently developed dementia and could no longer live alone, he and his sister searched for facilities that could accommodate her. They narrowed their choices to two places. Both had pros and cons. He incubated a dream in which he asked for guidance from his deceased father. In the dream, his father handed him two checks for small amounts of money. Rob’s interpretation of the dream was that they should choose the less expensive facility, so that’s what they did. His mother toured the facility, moved in today – April 27 – and loves it.

We can also incubate an inner climate, a receptivity and openness, that is conducive to spirit communication. In the course of a year, Mike Perry of the UK lost his mother, daughter, and closest friend of thirty years. One day while walking through town, he thought of his friend and asked for a sign that he was doing okay. Suddenly, a white feather landed at his feet, was whipped up in a breeze, then settled at his feet again. Stunned, he picked up the feather and knew his friend had just communicated with him. Whenever Mike needs reassurance about a deceased loved one, he requests a sign and invariably finds a white feather.

Objects that spirits use to communicate seem to be whatever is most convenient and immediate. They range from white feathers to books, straight pins to coins, appliances, photographs, numbers, even cakes! We’ve written a number of posts about these various aspects of spirit communication.

Recently, I was texting my sister about some old family photos I had run across and suddenly, a pair of hummingbirds landed on the bush outside my office window. We rarely see hummingbirds here and I felt strongly that the birds were messengers from my parents dropping in to say hello.

It seems these kinds of experiences are proliferating now, perhaps because Rob and I are working on a new book, Secrets of Spirit Communication: A Guide to the Language of the Dead. This evening as I was writing this post, I took a break and clicked over to Whitley Strieber’s site. And what do I find? A new and moving journal entry from him entitled Building a Bridge Between Worlds. It’s about the communication he and others have had with his wife, Anne, since she passed on last summer.

Okay, I thought. A synchro. Then I realized I hadn’t dropped in on Mike Perry’s blog today and clicked over to his site. His  post is entitled Life After Death and has two intriguing stories about spirit communication. The second synchro in just a matter of minutes. I’m expecting a third to that it’s officially, at least in my mind, a cluster. I’m interpreting these as confirmations that we’re on the right track with this new book.

Inviting Flow, and Temporal Density.............

Finally I'm alone.  I spend my winters and spring now running a "ladies boarding house".  My duties range from being a cleaning lady to a guide of souls, with the major emphasis on being a cleaning lady.  Perhaps in the future my art intensives, whereby people come to 5 day workshops and stay here in the process will provide a living..........but for now, I'm just glad to have a livelihood.

So now I confront a  Tucson summer, which is a little like confronting the strenuous and internalizing life of a Minnesota winter.  The heat, like the extreme cold, flattens everything.  Yesterday it was a mild 105 degrees, and it will not vary much until the Monsoons come in late July.  It is not without its beauties, but it is strange to not be travelling, to have this self-chosen solitude.  But I need this time of reflection, and I am devoting it to seeing what is inside me artistically. 

One of the advantages of being in my mid 60's is that I just don't give a damn any more about so much that tormented and constructed me before.  The joy of "deconstruction"!  I'm completely allergic to the art world, which never made much sense to me anyway. Do I care what people think of my work?  No,  but I do hope it can "emanate" something, even if its on an unconscious or  aesthetic level, emanate something that has its source in the divine thread that began it.   

As I write, I remember a woman I met once who created banners that hung in churches.  She lived at Findhorn, and the dyes for her banners were derived from flowers and herbs there, what she called "colors and gifts from the Devas".  As the banners faded,   she felt they were emanating a kind of spiritual fragrance, a healing power.  I like that.

I'm inviting Flow.  Like many, I find my mind so distracted and fragmented by the demands and  habits of "too much" that it is hard to contact the pregnant, dark, Silence from which the voice of the Divine speaks, from which our inner life is endlessly being sourced.  It always comes back to Gaia.   Religion, philosophy, all of it seems to be less important to me these days, my gratitude and appreciation for the privilege of living on Gaia, being a part of Gaia, is meaning enough.   Let my work in whatever form praise the Earth, from which all our stories arise, and to which they return. 

And if I am not walking in the cool beloved  woods of the dappled North Country this  Solstice, well, let me celebrate the strange beauty of the desert I am living in, those creatures of the fierce sun at its Zenith and the blessings of the cool nights.  

I found myself thinking of John Steele, as I try to clear the debris away from my creativity. Looking back, I see how many, many times I have been blessed by meeting people who set me on my path, who gave me touchstones to illuminate the way, and too often, I didn't even notice at the time.  

I met John Steele in 1989, at the Symposium on Art and the Invisible Reality at Rutgers University, sponsored by Dr. Rafael Montanez Ortiz.  I wish there was another such conference!  I presented a performance piece called "When the Word for World Was Mother", and not too long after John kindly sent me his amazing book Earthmind: Communicating with the Living World of Gaia, in collaboration with  Paul Devereux and David Kubrin.  An important book, to me, an important book, period.  

John J. Steele is an aromatic consultant, archaeologist, author and visionary.  His work, whether with aromas or philosophy, engages questions about the nature of memory, time, consciousness and being. He has worked with Terence McKenna and Paul Devereux (The Dragon Project).   Steele  explores Vedic culture, Kali Yuga,  geomancy and what he calls "geomantic amnesia", geobiology, time out of balance, shamanism, the effects of geological formations on human consciousness, cross state retention, and the importance of sacred sites and spaces. EARTHMIND explores ways of interfacing with the earth for planetary healing. And Planetary Healing is also our healing.

 In a (now unavailable)  collection of audio seminars, John Steele gave us an overview of how geomantic traditions worldwide, from the Aborigines of Australia to the Stones of Salisbury  have influenced human awareness, psychology and ways of life. He explains how sacred geometry can grant us access to "Present Time", the great and infinite place where silent knowledge flows into our consciousness unrestricted by the objects that surround us, and in many ways, "own us".

"The memorial capacity is the key to the strength of a computer, and our computers are valued by their increasing capacity to store memory.  There is an emphasis upon the acquisition of memory that can be stuffed into a computer..........What happens after a while is that the system becomes constipated by too much hoarding of memory.  This hoarding of memory (in human terms)  sets up a kind of psychological density, and as the system becomes clogged it becomes brittle.  That is to say it cannot react quickly to crisis situations because it is overloaded with information."

"The density of objects in the environment creates a corresponding density of memory necessary to record objects, and this density of memory creates temporial density.  Temporal density is a function of memorial density and memorial density is a function of object density.  You will notice that those cultures that have the fewest objects live in the dream time.  You look at the Australian aborigines with their minimal object array and you see that they live in a completely different time frame. The Bushmen the same.  As temporal density occurs it sets up this extended unconscious array of time - time is generated."

A while back I wrote an  article about Geomancer Sig Lonegren  (who also profoundly, and with utter serendipity, set me on my path many years ago) in which he commented that he believed the great Megalithic structure of Stonehenge was a "last attempt" to retain right brain, or "dreamtime" consciousness as human culture, with the continuing advent of language,  began to change during the Neolithic.  In a sense, he was perhaps  saying that the capacity for  greater contact with "the collective mind of Gaia" was gradually being lost.  Perhaps it is now time to regain that mediumistic capacity in a new way.  

I feel John Steele, and his colleagues, and Sig Lonegren............hold the key to something so important in understanding our place on the planet, and an ancient and arising paradigm that is essential.   I'm saddened that they are so little known.

And for myself, confronting the internal life of a long desert summer........May I open a Flow this summer as I create new Earth Shrines, new and yet repeated, endlessly repeated like a chant.......homage to our Mother Earth.  

"We live in the time of Kali Yuga.  Kali is the Goddess of the dissolution of time and structures.  She clears the way for those impediments of evolution that have arisen.  The Tibetan translation for "Kali Yuga" means literally the  "dregs of time", the bottom of the barrel of time.  Time has acquired such "temporal density" that it can actually be felt in the body.  And the definition of "Temporal Density" is that we have too many units of events in each day to fully or effectively assimilate them.........Another aspect of Kali Yuga   which is related to temporal density is that there is seasonal disequilibrium.  The climate and the seasons go out of whack."

John Steele

***




‘Earthmind: Communicating with the living world of Gaia’ by Paul Devereux with John Steele and David Kubrin 

 "The authors make much of the effect on mind of the electromagnetic properties of the Earth and its rocks. They believe that communication with the Earthmind or anima mundi can best be achieved at sacred sites, facilitated by the crystal structures within the dolmens there. However, the authors believe there are hopeful signs of a revival of belief in paganism and in Earth’s spirituality, which would contribute to lessening our desecration of our planetary home. The key to such a consciousness revolution rests, in the opinion of the authors, with acceptance of the existence of a universal field of consciousness and our spiritual integration with it – what Peter Russell (The Awakening Earth)" described as the Gaiafield and which Devereux calls Earthmind.

for a great review:   http://greenspirit.org.uk/bookreviews/2013/05/earthmind-communicating-with-the-living-world-of-gaia-by-paul-devereux-with-john-steele-and-david-kubrin/

The Morrigan

I've always loved this poem, which seemed to erupt from me when I was creating a mask for the Celtic Goddess of battle, justice, and lamentation in 1999.  The Romans record that the Gauls (Celts) went to war with the certainty that the Morrigan, in the guise of a raven, would bear them to the Summerlands if they died in battle.  I could almost hear the ferocity of Her  voice, with an Irish lilt, spoken with a backdrop of drum and bagpipes, which were traditionally used to lament the dead, as well as a call to battle.

It's one of the few things I've written, in other words, that I really don't know where it came from, I provided the hand, Spirit provided the words. At that time I had a gallery in Berkeley, and was deeply engaged in working with the Goddesses - it was a time of flow and attunement.    I hope to open this channel again.   And this poem speaks to me still.  The message is about the entwinement of all experiences, a call to re-member that the real battle is the evolution of our souls into compassion and love, the understanding of that fundamental evolutionary truth, especially now.  I guess that's why, when I put together this collage while thinking about how I might make a new Morrigan mask, a mask that waits to be filled by a new storyteller, the threads of the Web had to be manifest in the drawing.

The CURSE OF THE MORRIGAN

You who bring suffering to children:

​May you look into the sweetest, most open eyes, and howl the loss of your innocence.

You who ridicule the poor, the grieving, the lost, the fallen, the inarticulate, the wounded children in grown-up bodies:

May you look into each face, and see a mirror. May all your cleverness fall into the abyss of your speechless grief, your secret hunger, may you look into that black hole with no name, and find....the most tender touch in the darkest night, the hand that reaches out. May you take that hand. May you walk all your circles home at last, and coming home, know where you are.

You tree-killers, you wasters:    May you breathe the bitter dust, may you thirst, may you walk hungry in the wastelands, the barren places you have made. And when you cannot walk one step further, may you see at your foot a single blade of grass, green, defiantly green. And may you be remade by it's generosity.

And those who are greedy in a time of famine:  May you be emptied out, may your hearts break not in half, but wide open in a thousand places, and may the waters of the world pour from each crevice, washing you clean.

Those who mistake power for love:  May you know true loneliness. And when you think your loneliness will drive you mad, when you know you cannot bear it one more hour, may a line be cast to you, one shining, light woven strand of the Great Web glistening in the dark. And may you hold on for dear life.

Those passive ones, those ones who force others to shape them, and then complain if it's not to your liking:

May you find yourself in the hard place with your back against the wall. And may you rage, rage until you find your will. And may you learn to shape yourself.

And you who delight in exploiting others, imagining that you are better than they are:

May you wake up in a strange land as naked as the day you were born and thrice as raw. May you look into the eyes of any other soul, in your radiant need and terrible vulnerability. May you know yourSelf. And may you be blessed by that communion.

                   And may you love well, thrice and thrice and thrice,
                   and again and again and again
                   May you find your face before you were born.

                   And may you drink from deep, deep waters.

a New Studio.....

Is your studio a Sacred Space?

Even if, for now, it's just a scetch book

 or a laptop

 or a table on the porch.

Have a private showing.  

Arrange a series or two like a story,

a vocabulary of  touchstones and talismans:

field notes for the wilderness,

and urban road maps

gathered from a life-long journey

that feels like a 

pilgrimage

...........From The Artist's Oracular Cookbook

I'm thinking of building a new studio on my property..........rather, constructing a large (20'x12') shed with a corrugated patio.  It would be a sizable investment, but ah.........to have a space I can really work.  And the main reason would be to have a space where I can more effectively teach small intensives, offering students both a place to work and rooms in my house as well.  There is no learning like the learning that happens when people live and work together, sharing meals, process and dreams.

Thinking about it........it would be a sizable investment for me, in a time when increasingly I feel funds for the arts are disappearing, as well as, and particularly, venues where artists can share, create, interact, show.  But then, maybe one answer is just to stop paying rent and bringing ones creativity to line the pockets of real estate investors, and do it all right in your own back yard.

I like the idea.  Incubating it................

The Acheulian Goddess - earliest human art a Mother Goddess?

The Acheulian Goddess I recently re-discovered this, and felt like sharing it again.  This may be  the earliest work of art ever found* that represents a human/primate figure.  I learned of this a few years back from  The Goddess Timeline.    It is a female figure carved in all probability  by pre-human (homo erectus) people. The Acheulian Goddess was carved by a nomadic hominid tribe who predated even the Neanderthal era, and  has been recently carbon dated as camping at Berekhat Ram (in the modern-day Golan Heights region of Israel) between 232,000 and 800,000 years ago! The Berekhat Ram Figurine (The Acheulian Goddess)  is a 35mm high fragment of volcanic rock (basaltic tuff) that was found between two layers of volcanic flow in the Levantine area of southern Syria. It is thought to be between 233,000 and 800,000 years old, dating from the Acheulian paleolithic era, and has been attributed to either Archaic Homo Sapiens or to Homo Erectus. The artisan is believed to have taken a small stone with existing feminine features, and used a flint tool to incise grooves delineating the head and arms, thus creating the oldest known human image.  From scoria stone they carved the astounding figurine which, according to the Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society,  "...might be considered the earliest manifestation of a work of art."

---

Acheulian	Willendorf

It is remarkable to note the similarities between the Willendorf and the far, far older Acheulian. Both figures are distinctly female, great breasted with featureless head and discrete limbs. Using flint tools, the maker of the Acheulian intentionally adapted an existing small stone which already had breast-like Mother Goddess features "...by adding incised grooves delineating the head and arms." Like Willendorf the Acheulian appears to have a groove suggestive of the sacred vulva.

Over a thousand miles and an amazing quarter-million years separate this piece from the famous Willendorf Goddess find in Austria.  Until the past few decades, the Willendorf, carved of bone circa 32,000 years ago, was held to be the earliest human crafted work of art and veneration.

In trying to find links to this for this article, I can't help but laugh at the "patriachal paradigm predjudice"  which is that these "venus" figures are somehow extremely ancient forms of pornography.  As if the image of life nurturing breasts, and vulva from which the miracle of birth ensues, could only  symbolize  male sexual pleasure.  

It took a brilliant women archeologist, Marija Gimbutas, to look at the  ubiquitious forms, previously called "fetish objects" and realize that they did not represent the Paleolithic notion of a playboy centerfold,  but rather, they were sacred talismens representing the Prime Deity, the body of the Goddess from which life issues and, as in cave arts, to which life returns as well.  They were probably carried for protection, fertility, and other spiritual reasons.  

An example of this extraordinary inability to see the obvious, not to mention an amazing dismissal of the abilities and needs of the female side of humanity going back half a million years............may be found in the article I quote from below, describing one of the "Earliest Representations of the Female Body"*** in which a (male) archeologist notes that the form is "sexually aggressive" and must have "been carved by a man to represent his girlfriend".  Amazing assumptions!***

** There is an incised pattern found on a mollusk shell that is approximately 500,000 years old, believed to have been made by pre-humans.  http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/oldest-art-was-carved-onto-shell-540000-years-ago-141203.htm *** "As one male colleague remarked, nothing has changed in 40,000 years," said Nicholas Conard, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tubingen and the proj's leader.  "It is the oldest example of figurative art in any class, making it all the more surprising that the figurine presents such a powerful, sexually aggressive image." "All place emphasis on sexual attributes and lack emphasis on the legs, arms, face and head, made all the more noticeable in this case because a carefully carved, polished ring "“ suggesting that the figurine was once suspended as a pendant "“ exists in place of a head," he added.  Professor Paul Mellars, an archeologist at the University of Cambridge, wrote a commentary about the Venus to accompany the publication of the group's findings in Nature magazine.  "It's at least as old the world's oldest cave art," Mellars wrote, adding that the observer "can't avoid being struck by its very sexually explicit depiction of a woman.  The breasts really jump out at you." In an interview with Discovery news he added, "I assume it was a guy who carved it, perhaps representing his girlfriend "¦ Paleolithic Playboy?  We just don't know how it was used at this point, but the object's size meant it fit well in someone's hand." http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1688745/archeologists_find_oldest_representation_of_a_female_body/#ETgWQoGupLDIpRJs.99

Love Poems from the Lost............

I was looking through old files, and found poems, poems from people whose names I have lost, poems from people who left me their beautiful moments in poetry of one shape or another, and then were somehow lost, like footprints disappearing along a beach, in the time stream. I have lost their names, I am sorry to say, they have become unamed, even un-faced, in my own particular stream - but here they are, their moments remaining, like touchstones.  Some of these poems, on old typewritten paper or even the lined pages of a notebook, just have a first name.  Most, not even that.  Should I be ashamed to share here what was so generously given thus?   So I felt like dedicating this post to those  poems from the Lost.  And if the names thereby surface again, by any chance, that would be good indeed.  I am sorry I have lost your names, but with age, it seems the names go out of things. 

 Perhaps, it is time to un-name things anyway, and find new names closer to the fragrance of who we are or were.  Thank you once again for the pentimentos  that remain.

Anenomes

At this shoreline

there is no visible 

bridge to cross

the anemones of love

are opening, closing

opening, closing

half-visible

in waters below

you must take the leap

....?

It was only

three strands of hair

falling across an eye half closed

a flash of green light

a  curtain of eyelash

a snapshot

in my memory book

where you  still live,  the moment

unlost,

expanding,

weightless 

.....Darren

Losing Her Way Back Home

I want to still be that girl with

Cottonwood leaves caught in

The damp rope of her undeniably

Red hair while she dances so hard

The whole day stops –it just stops-

To stand brilliant and razor-edged

Around her long brown body

Writhing so close to the ground that

Her hands and hair caress the earth

She is holding onto lust, life and fire

Even as it all sifts and spills

Through her wide open fingers.

Down here in the riverbed,

A dry heat is burning my skin

To parchment and clay. I chain-

Smoke stolen cigarettes and

Mumble the words to a song I

Once heard on your pickup truck

Radio when it was tuned to only static

Except for that beat: the pound

Of dirty feet against the dust

That was rolling up in clouds

Around us, the sudden vision

Of human bodies urging the

Earth towards orgasm. The

Spirits of animals walking

Towards the dancers with

The intention of union,

Singing a song with the sound

Of wind-filled bones and

Skin drums: heartbeat/

Bodybeat in the lucidity

Of a circle filled with light.

You wearing golden feathers

And calling out to me until

I gave life to the dance and matched

The rhythm struggling to emerge

From those half-busted speakers

And I sang words as bright

And hard as the desert we drove

Across at not-so-high

Speeds taking in the stars

Like a drink, like something

We could become drunk upon

Exploded into something

Less than fragmented

Until we were lit up

And glowing volcano-

Red in the August night.

But tonight, the world is

Darker and much less alive; you

Are long since gone and the dance

Circle is nowhere in sight. I am

Just a girl with crow feathers

In her red hair, crouching in the

Remnants of a dried up river

Alone and aching for a song,

A drink, a dance partner

And the sound of a hundred

Barefooted bodies still making

Insatiable love to the ground.

.....?

The Game

The big bang was a sigh,

God wistful for a playmate,

bored of being and looking

for action.

I remember God as chubby

from eons lounging

on the ein sofa, a bit mad

from an infinity

of doing nothing.

He made me just after finger painting

a binary star; this forever colored me

in shades of two, as if being One

wasn't hard enough.

I divided: One half hurtling

to frontier reaches, the other

curling into a universe

no bigger than dust.

The game was to find

each other across the vastness,

space and time

our playground.

When we met

in the billionth year,

we traded discoveries

and tales, gifts

of blue feathers, a red stone,

arrowhead and a chain

of stars.

The real prize: In your arms

In my arms,  Home. 

....Lori

If I were to write a poem for you

I can tell you what it would not be

I would not include flowers

too sweet with immanent decay

no forevers, or  deadly promises, 

or worse plans for

Where We Go From Here.

I would say just this:

your fire ran across my thigh

it burns there still.

You have left your mark.

For a moment,

we took that  flame

in our mouths,

and passed it, one to another:

and we were warmed by this,

made bright.

If I were to write a poem for you

I might say this was more

than enough,

without having to give it a name

or a position in the Zodiac.

.....Steven

The Hand and the Eye Revisited

"Hand and Eye" by Tylor Gore

Moundville Mississippian ceremonial tablet, ca. 1500 a.d.

I've found myself returning to the often ubiquitous image of the "hand and the eye" in my art and imagination, and re-vamping some articles that concern it, so forgive me if I "repeat myself" for any who may be interested.  I am always  mytho-archeology and "artology" minded, but recognize that this image  may seem esoteric to most.   But if one is  following the elusive trail of myth, metaphor, and archetype, those mysterious touchstones found along the path of synchronicity and art and dream.....read on.

I had a friend who is a collector of artifacts, and remember that she  showed me what looked like a piece of thick shell, about 3"x 2", stained, carved into the shape of a hand, incised to show the fingers and joints, and with an eye and pupil in the center of the palm. A hole was drilled in the top of this medallion or amulet, presumably so it could be worn with a cord. Judith said she bought it at show from someone who came from Ohio.

Design engraved on Spiro shell; Hamilton, The Spiro Mound, 1952,
The Missouri Archaeological Society.

I was fascinated by this native American artifact, and found myself continually holding it. It seemed to emanate a kind of "clarifying" energy, and being curved, fit into the palm of one's hand. I don't have a photo of Judith's amulet, but the shell gorget above is from a similar source.
The "Hand and Eye" motif, like the Spider with Cross, are found throughout prehistoric sites of the Mississippian peoples of the great river valleys, from Ohio to Alabama.

These people have also been called the Mound Builders, leaving behind mounds and burial chambers (in 2007 I visited Wickliffe Mounds in Kentucky,  and in 2015 I visited Mound State Park in Indiana, which features several massive circle mounds.  It is located near Camp Chesterfield Spiritualist Center).

The awesome "Serpent Mound" in Ohio has been associated with these ancient peoples.



For those unfamiliar, atop a plateau overlooking Brush Creek Valley, Serpent Mound is the largest serpent effigy in the United States. Nearly a quarter of a mile long, it apparently represents an uncoiling serpent; its "head" may also represent an egg in the mouth of the serpent. It has been variously dated from about 1,400 years ago to as long ago as originating in 5,000 bc. It's also geomantically interesting that this ceremonial mound was built on the site of a ancient meteorite strike. Some scholars also believe it aligns with the summer solstices, and also with the constellation "Draco", suggesting it was designed when the star draconis alpha was the pole star. Serpent Mound is certainly one of America's greatest archaeological mysteries.
At any rate, my fascination with Judith's artifact, an ancient sacred image once ubiquitous among the Americas. Judith's carved shell Hand and Eye may well be 500 years old or older. Why did they wear it, engrave it in stone?

Variants of the Hand and Eye motif. a, b, c, Southeastern United States (after Waring and Holder 1945, Figs. 1, 7 a-c); d,Lienzo de Tlaxcala: 40 (after Seler 1902-23, Vol. 2: 569, Fig. 99).

What did this iconic image mean to these prehistoric people, who were the ancestors of the Cherokee and others? I am familiar with the "Hamsa", also called the "Hand of Fatima", a symbol used to ward off evil ( worn as an amulet, or over doors) in the Middle East, both by Muslim and Jewish peoples. This token is ubiquitous through the Arabic world, although it's meaning is undoubtedly different. What does it personally mean to me, so that I am continually finding ways to incorporate it into my artwork? Perhaps, to me it represents conscious mind in the works of our hands, in what we manifest. Beyond that, the Presence of God/dess, of the divine, the "one within the many", moving through the manifest creative and healing works of our hands, of our lives. An amulet not to avert evil, but to call forth the divine vision and creativity.

Does that make sense?


Here's an amazing "Hands with Eyes" mask made by artist Dan Lyke, which I found on the fabulous web page "Hand and Eye" created by T.P. Kunesh, whose fascinating (and wry) website shows him to be a philosopher and visionary worth knowing. My great thanks to Mr. Kunesh for the images and commentary he provided me with.

"Hands Mask" by Dan Lyke at Burning Man (2000)

Here is some further information about the mysterious Mound builders of southeastern U.S. I have taken much of this information from the inspired writings of writer and Jungian psychologist Frank Adair, MD, who resides in Redwood City, CA. I love one of his comments in particular about this symbol:

(The) inner Self has been likened to God or to "God within us". It has been called the light of nature that creates our dreams. Whatever "it" is called will involve some degree of projection limiting meaning. Somehow, the eye as symbol captures the pivotal point between the opposites, between the conscious and unconscious - where "the land meets the sea."

The hand adds richness to the symbol. Hands can build the bridge between our inner world and the external world...The hands are the mediators between spirit and matter, between an inner image and an actual creation. By handling, the existing energies become visible.

Large ceremonial centers were found in Moundville, Alabama, Etowah in Georgia, Spiro in Oklahoma and Cahokia in Illinois. These Mississippian mounds are the greatest sources of the artifacts of this culture. The mounds served as raised platforms for structures built of timber, mud and thatch. The eye, usually a simple oval containing a small circular pupil, is centered in the palm, and it's been suggested it symbolizes the hand and eye of the creator.

This famous disc has a hand pointing upward, and appears to be both sides of the hand (perhaps suggesting non-duality?) There are two knotted rattle snakes. (Being knotted, they could further suggest the forces symbolized by the snake as contained, controlled, or organized by the hand?). The meaning of this piece is ultimately unknown by archaeologists, but that it represents shamanistic power and/or deity is certain. ( see, Walthall, 1994).

As Dr. Adair points out in his article, the motif of the "eye in the palm" is found in paintings of the compassionate Bodhisattva White Tara of Tibet. He further points out that none other than the great mythologist Joseph Campbell (1) has mused and written this about possible meanings of this particular Native American stone disc:

Interpreted in Oriental terms, its central sign would be said to represent the "fear banishing gesture" of a Bodhisattva hand showing on its palm the compassionate Eye of Mercy, pierced by the sight of the sorrows of this world. The framing pair of rattlesnakes, like those of the Aztec Calendar Stone, would then symbolize the maya power binding us to this vortex of rebirths, and the opposed knots would stand for the two doors, east and west, of the ascent and descent, appearances and disappearances, of all things in the endless round. Furthermore, the fact that the eye is at the center of the composition would suggest, according to this reading, that compassion is the ultimate sustaining and moving power of the universe, transcending and overcoming its pain. And finally, the fact that the hand is represented as though viewed simultaneously from back and front would say that this Bodhisattva power unites opposites.

Our picture depicts the dual aspects of psychic life which have been projected, since ancient times, as metaphysical realms. On the one hand, there is ordered consciousness symbolized by the regular appearance of the sun's "blazing eye;" on the other hand, there is the unconscious, a chaotic region of animal instincts, symbolized as "serpentine monsters" capable indeed of wrapping themselves around the ego and dragging it into its depths. Yet the American Indian projection preserves the fact that the unconscious is full of novelty and is a creative reality which can be harmonized with the structures of conscious living. That has been achieved aesthetically in our artifact. The image of a "hand" at the center reminds us that this beautiful piece was made by human hands and hints at the requirement of human effort if we are ever to unite the opposites within ourselves. Should what we say here be more than intuition, should it also be rooted in the facts of the psyche and in the requirement to withdraw projections, then sensation has also been served. Serving opposite functions and honoring the larger duality of the conscious and unconscious psyche is, then, the modest modern equivalent of the prayers, offerings, and correct ethical behavior of the Mound Builders. (1)

References (From Dr. Adair and others):

1 Campbell, J. (1990). The Mythic Image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Fundaburk, E.L. & Foreman, M.D. (1985). Sun Circles and Human Hands: The Southeastern Indians. Art and Industry. Fairhope, AL: American Bicentennial Museum.

Kunesh, T.P. The Eye in the Hand, http://www.darkfiber.com/eyeinhand/

Walthall, J. (1994). Moundville: An introduction to the archaeology of a Mississippian chiefdom. Tuscaloosa, AL: Alabama Museum of Natural History.

Frank Adair, MD www.uroborus.com

http://www.tylergore.com/

The legendary logo of the Church of the Subgenius ("the all grasping hand of Bob")