"Sedna" and a syncronicity

 

"In the archaic universe all things are signs and signatures of each other. Inscribed in the hologram, to be divined subtly."

Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill

Every time I sit down to write, I always feel like it entails constructing articles complete with footnotes and addendum.......which is one of the reasons my articles have been not very inventive or prolific lately. Having said that, I'm going to loosen up, maybe make a few subjective statements and meandering surmises, and stop feeling I have to write as if I was defending my ideas at a podium.

Currently I belong to an online group that meets once a month to share and discuss synchronicities, or meaningful coincidences.  Because of that, I've been wanting to collate or review some of the many synchronicities I archived in this Blog.  Below is one from 2012 that involved a good friend of mine, the sculptor Georgia Stacy who lives in Nogal, New Mexico.  

Erica Swadley as "Sedna's Shaman" in Restoring the Balance (2004)

 In 2009 I sent out an email about an article to be published in   Coreopsis : A Journal of Myth and Theatre    for their Summer/Autumn Issue of 2009.  The theme for that edition was  ironically themed "Mask, Mirror, and Muse".  My article was about my ritual theatre event/performance at the former Muse Community Arts Center:  "Restoring the Balance: the Mask of Sedna" .  

I'm proud of that article. Restoring the Balance was the last event I personally directed using the Masks of the Goddess collection, although they did travel to other producers.  It was also an event wholly infused with, for lack of a better word, a kind of numinous presence, and synchronicities abounded in it's production.  I even found myself after the event with spirit photographs!

Katherine Josten as "Sedna" 

I have always felt I had a responsibility to document and share the stories participants created, told, or re-told with the masks.  Not just the ever-evolving myths themselves, such as the "Story of Sedna", Inuit Mother Goddess of the Ocean,  but also the stories of the rituals, the performances, the insights that arose for those who were involved in the productions.  In the hope that those archives may inspire others to carry on the work.  These were collective re-mythings: prayers and celebrations of the multi-cultural Divine Feminine through the medium of story, performed within the liminal landscapes of ritual, theatre and sacred space.

As members of the neo-pagan Collective Reclaiming used to say when a Circle was cast for ritual work: 

"We are between the worlds now, and what happens between the worlds can change the world."  

To be "between the worlds" is to be in that zone between the secular and the sacred, a circular "wholly" place that is fertile and imaginally fluid. ("Imaginal cells" is the actual scientific term for the cells that are responsible for transforming a caterpillar, immersed in its chrysalis, into a butterfly. They are alchemic agents of biological change.)

"I think many artists feel they are weaving some form of energy into their work. It's what psychometrists see when they "read" objects. There is an aesthetic psychometry each person does as they look at a work of art. Artworks are like batteries - if we're receptive, they can charge us. My idea of reality is that there are many, many interpenetrating dimensions." .....Alex Grey

 "What happens between the worlds", fashioned with individual and collective intention, occuring with or without the form of conscious ritual or pilgrimage,  is a generative place, ripe with syncronicities, because therein the  boundaries lessen.

"Wind Borne" by Georgia Stacy

So, what this is leading to is an email I received, after forwarding my article about the Myth of Sedna, to Georgia in New Mexico. Recently, Georgia has begun to include whale flukes instead of wings in her wood sculptures. Here's a new piece from that series and an email she sent me back.

 Lauren, This is more than a coincidence. I was reading the "Inuit Imagination". When I came to the sculpture carved for Sedna, with a whale fluke, I cried for the second time. I cried the first time I heard the story, many years ago. But, the clincher...right before I turned on the computer to find your email, a friend called and wanted to read me the story of Sedna, because I had just finished a sculpture with bones for arms. Life is so interesting.

Georgia

Why this confluence of syncronicities?  I personally, having worked for years with myths as an artist, and with Collaborators who are "activating" the myths through art and drama - I personally believe that the archetypes are alive in our collective consciousness, within the "dream body" of humanity. The story of Sedna is a very important story for our time.  It is about the suffering and sacrifice of the  Sustaining Mother, what happens when Mother Earth is disregarded and abused,  and the rites of at-one-ment the Inuit did to regain balance and good relationship with Her. It recognizes the interdependency of all beings, and the need for honor, and Balance.   It is also about the suffering of women at the hands of men, the imbalance that occurs when the feminine is not honored, and what must arise in order to restore the Balance. 

It's about exactly what we lack in our industrialized, climate imperiled  time: a deep ecological understanding of reciprocity with the living Earth and all the mutually inter-dependant beings we share our lives with.    The "Story of Sedna" is an old myth that belongs to an indigenous people most Americans have never heard of - yet it is a myth that has universal and contemporary significance.  The telling that occured in our event was ripe with synchronicity because it was a story that needed to be told again. 

SEDNA https://terragenesis.fandom.com/wiki/Sedna

 Interestingly (synchronistically)  "Restoring the Balance" was produced at All Nations Hall at the Muse Community Arts Center  on April 9th, 2004.  I did not know it at the time, but just a few weeks before that NASA announced the discovery of a new planet beyond Pluto which astronomers named "Sedna".  *  (I learned about the new planet shortly after the event.  It seemed, to my personal poetics, like a synchronistic and grand metaphor for the concerns of our time, and I thought of my fascination with another indigenous Goddess, the "midwife of the New Era", Spider Woman.**)

When we step inside the magic Circle "between the worlds", when we enter the "fissures", we find we are not alone. Here's another quote from Alex Grey, in an interview I did with him and Allyson in 1989: 

"If you reach down far enough, we're all made up of the same archetypes. Joseph Campbell talked about what he called "core myths". As did Jung. If you go deep enough into yourself, you find yourself in a noisy place with a lot of other people. And if you draw symbols from there, you plug into a collective form of consciousness." 

Well, back to the studio now, and hopefully, the Cracks will continue to open, even if I'll never understand why.

"There's a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in." 

 .....Leonard Cohen

Painting by Tyler Gore

* "March 15, 2004: NASA-funded researchers have discovered the most distant object orbiting the sun. It's a mysterious planet-like body three times farther from Earth than Pluto.

 "The sun appears so small from that distance that you could completely block it out with the head of a pin," said Dr. Mike Brown, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif., associate professor of planetary astronomy and leader of the research team. The object, called Sedna for the Inuit goddess of the ocean, is 13 billion kilometers away. Sedna will come closer to Earth in the years ahead, but even at closest approach, about 72 years from now, Sedna is very far away. Then it will begin its 10,500-year trip back to the far reaches of the solar system. "The last time Sedna was this close to the sun, Earth was just coming out of the last ice age. The next time it comes back, the world might again be a completely different place," Brown said.

Mysterious Sedna: Astronomers have discovered a mysterious planet-like body in the distant reaches of the solar system.

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/16mar_sedna

** In some Pueblo mythologies Spider Woman (Tse Che Nako, the Thought Woman) is a Creatrix Goddess.  She also is a Midwife to each new Age.  

"The end of the Hopi calendar, and entry into the "5th World", is thus also about the "Return of Spider Woman", the cosmic weaver who is also, in the Pueblo mythological universe, the midwife who guides the "new people" through the Sipapu (or birth canal) in the sacred Kiva, offering a thread (or a ladder) to rise up into each "New World"...... I reflect that in the Circles I've participated in, there are 5 directions: North, South, East, West, and Center. The Center is that which unites everything, the breathe, the dark space, ecological interdependency, the Web.  Integral."

The Spiritual Significance of 2012,  12/7/2012

"Every atom of your body is connected to every other atom in the universe, as it exchanges energy and information with the vacuum"...Nassim Haramein

Vision Questing

 FOLLOW YOUR BLISS

The divine manifestation is ubiquitous,

Only our eyes are not open to it.

Awe is what moves us forward.

Live from your own center.

The divine lives within you.

The separateness apparent in the world is secondary.

Beyond the world of opposites is an unseen,

but experienced, unity and identity in us all.

Today the planet is the only proper “in group.”

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.

We cannot cure the world of sorrows,

but we can choose to live in joy.

You must return with the bliss and integrate it.

The return is seeing the radiance is everywhere.

The world is a match for us.

We are a match for the world.

The spirit is the bouquet of nature. . . .

Sanctify the place you are in.

Follow your bliss. . . .

~ Joseph Campbell 

"The Sacred Mirrors" (http://www.sacredmirrors.org)

Joseph Campbell in his "The Power of Myth" interviews with Bill Moyers famously said "Follow your Bliss.......and doors will open where you don't expect them to."  Bill Moyers agreed in his own way, commenting that he felt sorry for people who seemingly  "had no invisible means of support".

I have not been able to write, or even make art lately, a block I hope will pass.  So I look back, look back, look back, and that is appropriate for this time of year, the time of Samhain.  This post is from exactly 6 years ago, what I was thinking about then.  

I lost my two oldest friends in the past 5 years,the poet Felicia Miller and the composer and writer Joanna Brouk.   I know that I am not immortal as well, and think often, "what can I leave behind?"  Well, there is a body of work, lots and lots of art and writing!  Who knows what will happen to all that, since I have neither descendants to preserve it, nor patrons to eagerly collect the "works of Lauren Raine"!  Still, I love my work and am glad of the creative life I've been privileged to live.  And if there is a "message" I could convey, it is that of the Goddess and viewing the world through a different paradigm, and also, the grace and help and magic that continually surrounds us, the "web of being".  I so often find I write about that, wanting to re-affirm for myself and for others "what I saw" at the margins.

"Spiral" by Catherine Nash

I am remembering  today my  rather miraculous  journey that began with a book I wanted to write just after I finished my MFA, a project that took me across the country and introduced me to a nomadic life.  Perhaps the reason I feel like telling this winding story  is two-fold:  It seems important to pass on the good news that we so very often, if we undertake that which we feel passionate about, find that "doors open where you least expect them to", as Joseph Campbell said. When I look back at many of the creative undertakings in my life, I have to admit the presence of the miraculous was there, collaborating with me.  

If there is any point to sharing this journal, it may well be my effort to affirm this perception, express my clumsy gratitude.  Life really is far more magical than we can imagine, and we're usually too busy to notice.

"First Chakra" by Beth Ames Swartz

"Life is what happens when you're making

other plans."......... John Lennon

In 1987, I graduated from the University of Arizona, feeling very unsure of what it might mean to be an artist.  I found many aspects of the art world cynical and devoid of depth or relevance.   I remember  conversations Catherine Nash  and other fellow students had about  New Age spirituality, my fascination with tribal arts, pouring over Kandinsky's "Concerning the Spiritual in Art", or Jose Arguelles "The Transformative Vision", my utter delight at seeing Alex Grey's "The Sacred Mirrors" in Art Week for the first time.  These were sources that truly moved me.

"You develop your skills and technical expertise, and then trust the process. You learn all you can learn, and then go into the studio and forget everything. There is an emptying out, being willing to confront not knowing. We really do not have a language in this culture for these kinds of experiences."

 Beth Ames Swartz

 So I boldly, if naively,   announced that I would go on a Vision Quest to write a book based on interviews with transformative, spiritual artists, since such people were generally ignored or pooh-poohed by the contemporary art world.  I made a book outline and proposal, interviewed my friends, and then made a list of some of the artists I wished I could interview, among them Alex Grey, Ingo Swann, and others.  I had one small problem:  I was a virtual unknown in the arts world.  How could I get anyone to take me seriously enough to let me interview them?

Synchronicities are like touchstones, you follow one and it leads to another.  Around this time I had a memorable dream - I was in construction gear with a hard hat on, and I was working on a big steel bridge.  Next to me was a black man in similar gear, and after a while he put down his tools, and said to me "we're just going to have to go to the authorities for help."  The "authorities"?  But amazingly, a few days later  I received a little booklet in the mail, which I have no memory of ordering,  from, I believe, Lucis Publishing.  It was an Alice Bailey pamphlet titled "Building and Bridging:  The New Group of World Servers".  Bridges, I thought, there it is again.

The following week, I was invited to a party, where I met an artist named Beth Ames Swartz, whose installation "A Moving Point of Balance" was soon to be on view at the University Art Museum.  I didn't really know anything about her, but at the party I shyly introduced myself, and rather audaciously told her I was writing a book about spiritual artists, and could I interview her.

Beth not only agreed, but told me she was one of the founders of the Transformative Art Movement, was organizing a conference, and would I like to have her list of contacts!  "I'm into bridge art" she told me.  That evening, when I looked through the papers she had given me, I found myself with a  list that included a number of the artists I had been thinking of, including Alex Grey and the great performance artist Rachel Rosenthal.  Now I had a personal introduction from Beth!

So I booked a crafts booth at a Renaissance Faire near New York City to pay my way, and off I went, on a journey that took me to NYC, and later Los Angeles, San Francisco, and points in between. So many surprising things happened!  I got my interview with  artist Rafael Ortiz about his Physio-Psycho-Alchemy, for example,   not because I sought him out, but because a co-worker at the Renaissance Faire mentioned that she knew him, and he was organizing some kind of conference about spiritual art at Rutgers.  Which is also how I became involved in Rafael's Art and the Invisible Reality Symposium, where I met many other artists pursuing spiritual expression.  And the Quest continued.

Just recently it was my pleasure to see that interview with Rafael published, at last, in the Coreopsis Journal of Ritual Theatre.  Circles and spirals..............

"The problem is we’re so skimpy and stingy, so timid about asking. The Universe is willing to give; its there for the asking.  When I work, I feel that ‘seamlessness” every much, because half of the time I don’t know where the ideas actually come from. They come in all kinds of forms. An idea can be formed in a sound, or in a very articulate kind of language….but it’s all part of the same thing. This comprehension of holism is very important at this point in time. I think it is also very important to the planet for us to be able to think in those terms" 

...........Rachel Rosenthal

I tried for a quite a while to get my book published, but was never successful.  To be honest, I think it was my own fault this was so - I had an underlying lack of confidence in myself that, in retrospect, undermined me every time.  I have seen this as a problem throughout my career, and it is a pleasure to be of an age and time of life now where, well, it's not relevant any more.  I don't care anymore about competition or ambition, I care only about the unfolding that m art offers me as I live this life.

Perhaps someday I'll go back to the Art and Spirituality project, with new perspective and much greater confidence.  I think such voices as Beth Ames Swartz, Rafael Ortiz, and many others (and me too!) are needed now.

The Sacred Mirrors

The Spiritual Energy System

As I probably have posted before, I spent several years after graduate school interviewing artists who were doing spiritual art, and among them was Alex and Allyson Grey.  I return to this wonderful interview to share it again.

To read more about THE SACRED MIRRORS, visit the website of Alex Grey:  

http://alexgrey.com/art/paintings/sacred-mirrors/

 


THE SACRED MIRRORS - The Art of Alex and Allyson Grey

Interview with Lauren Raine August 17, 1988    


The Greys have achieved international recognition as painters and performance artists. Alex is  the author of THE MISSION OF ART, a book about art and spirituality.

 Allyson's intricate paintings are abstract, unlike the visionary figurative work of her husband. Her Spectrum Series shows an underlying grid that runs throughout her work, sometimes visible, sometimes not. Allyson compares the squares that compose her paintings to cells, which like the cells of our bodies make up a living whole.  In her diptych Chaos and Order  Allyson  describes the ever transforming dance of energy and matter. And what lies beneath is Light  from which all colors come, and to which they return.

The Sacred Mirrors   are predominantly painted by Alex Grey, but include  collaborations by Allyson, and are a  group of 22 paintings that took Alex 10 years to complete. They are works of amazing dedication. They were first shown as a complete installation at The New Museum in New York in 1986. and since that time have toured museums around the world, to finally be installed in The Chapel of the Sacred Mirrors. There is also a book, THE SACRED MIRRORS (1990), with commentary by Alex Grey and Ken Wilber.

The paintings are "Mirrors of the Self", each one removing another "skin", another veil, to disclose the physical, social and metaphysical anatomy. Alex compares the progression of the series to the Alchemical Quest - "the transmutation of "base metals; lead (bodily consciousness) into gold (spiritual consciousness)."

The journey begins with the first painting, Material World. Fragments of actual mirrors, sandblasted with symbols for the elements of the periodic table, surround a human figure shaped from a leaden sheet. As you stand before the panel, you regard a distorted reflection of yourself within it ... our unfragmented self is obscured, hidden by the impenetrable density of physical life. The Body is explored through the different anatomical systems. As each skin is removed, another intricate system is revealed. What Alex calls the "Skins" reveal the socio-political dimensions of life. The last group is Spirit, metaphysical anatomy. Skeins of light emerge. Alex calls this the "Universal Mind Lattice", the dissolution of boundaries between self and surrounding as we enter unitive, spiritual dimensions of consciusness.

The journey to Self is, ultimately, a return to the world, to compassion and love within embodied existence. The Bodhisattvas are the next group, the illuminated ones. In 1989, Alex and Allyson collaborated on another painting they added to the original series of 21 - Sophia. The Sacred Mirrors close with a life-size mirror, with a sunburst inscribed at the level of the viewer’s heart. Within it is one word: "God".

Lauren:   Allyson, would you talk about your painting, The Jewel Net of Indra?

Allyson:   Indra is the Hindu god of space. The Net is a metaphor for the Net of space, the unity of being. At each point where the net intersects, there is a jewel, with infinite facets. And each facet reflects every other jewel in the Net. It's an infinitely reflected inner space.

I became an abstract painter with this series. In a sense, the work is Tantric. Much of the visionary art people are doing these days is narrative or allegorical, but mine is pretty purely abstract. It's based on units of linked squares, a spectrum made up of cells. The cells are unified into a system, just as we are. So, it models our life systems into small cells that fit together, and are also individual and distinct.

"Order" Allyson Grey

Alex: The idea of the Jewel Net is similar to the notion of a hologram; each part reflects the whole and an infinite progression is created.

Allyson: Chaos is also a major aspect of my work. One painting is a diptych, one side being Chaos, and the other Order. There is entropy - you can see there is order in the universe, but chaos is also very evident. The painting is composed of units of 100 squares, which are just constantly falling apart and coming together again.

Alex: Allyson's Chaos paintings are a kind of freeze frame, a momentary look into a chemical reaction that may be attaining a new level of order.

Allyson: It's like clouds. A cloud has a kind of solid form, yet if you watch one for a while, it always seems to be dispersing. Form exists, and the constant dissolution of form.

Alex: Allyson's Jewel Net is about something we both experienced a long time ago. It changed our work.

We did a psychedelic meditation together. For myself, there was a progressive infinitizing of space. I felt like I went out of my body, into what I can only describe as a network of interlocking cells. They were like energy cells within a grid that expanded infinitely. I was a cell, a kind of fountain and drain of energy, connected with all the other fountains and drains in the entire network, in the grid. And the energy moving through us all was love.....

I felt it was a resolution of the "one in many". We're all connected, on some level, and that level seemed more real than anything physical. This table does not seem as real to me as that experience. It was a kind of bedrock reality of the interpenetration of all beings and all things.

We were merged, and yet distinct. Each unit had a job to do, each being was separate, and at the same time was united by its similarity to all other beings and things, because the energy flowing through us was all the same energy. I felt that each resonating little node in the network was conscious of every other node, aware it was interconnected with all the other nodes.

The Universal Mind Lattice

Lauren: Was it frightening?

Alex: No, it was total bliss! It was an eternal place, a heaven realm.....I felt that this was integral to the universe, the way it really was. But it was inexplicable, and to try later to portray it as art was a mind numbing task.

Lauren: And you shared this experience together?

Allyson: Yes.

Alex: That was the other strange thing.

Allyson: We knew it had changed our work and our lives. It was the most important thing; we felt that was what we should make our art about. For me, and for Alex also, it was about energy. I felt energy flowing out of me, and flowing into Alex. We were like two nodes in a network, and as we got further and further along it, there was a whole vista of nodes, and we became part of all the vistas in the network - which is everybody and everything. We experienced it simultaneously. We both came out of it drawing pictures that were very much alike.

It was a vision, because it was visual. But it was also an experienced reality. It wasn't implanted, so much as we were opened to something already existing. As if the door opened, and there it was. That was what was real.



"The Spiritual Energy System" Alex Grey

Alex: As if the Curtains of Maya were pulled back for a moment, and we could see the furnace room of what is actually behind everything! I think the experience initiated us onto a spiritual path. It didn't mean we knew how to do anything at that point. We were given it in our ignorance, it changed us, and somehow our model of reality changed to accommodate the experience, and has progressively expanded through our readings and pursuit of various spiritual paths since.

The esoteric core of every religion talks about that dimension. The Tibetan Buddhists have words for it, Madame Blavatsky talked about the Monad, there is the Hindu Atman within the Brahman, Christ Consciousness......I think they're all metaphors for the same thing. I went looking for descriptions, you know, who else has been to this country? And I found numerous descriptions in esoteric and Yogic literature.

I later found an almost exact description of our experience in a Readers Digest from the 60's - an account from someone who died from a heart attack, and was brought back to life. He described a grid. Allyson's painting, the Jewel Net of Indra, speaks of that grid.

Allyson: The Spectrum is a system of color. Being a painter, I looked for the basics. I was looking for the underpinnings of painting as well as consciousness. In order to bring those two aspects together, the spectrum was, to me, the basic system. Rather than choosing one color over another, I chose the entire spectrum; and one shape, the square, which is a human-made shape, very rarely found in nature, because I'm a person, and I didn't want to create organic shapes. At any rate, I mixed formal aspects of painting, color, shape, composition of design, with actual systems that exist in life.

Also, a spectrum is white light broken down into its various components. So, there is a white light that runs through the work, uniting everything. The squares are units of light......playing and dancing.

Alex: And breaking down and coming together. Maybe we're all light, the world is made of light, and the nature of light is completely mysterious. So Allyson's paintings may be accurate representations of what's really going on.

Allyson: Because the light is what binds, and also what separates. That's my grid. And that's how things stay separate and together. Chaos and Order exist simultaneously without conflict, as does each color. It's just all these polarities joining in.

Alex: We're actually doing the same paintings, but they come out differently.

We've studied Tibetan Buddhism, and have been initiated into various initiations. We both found Tibetan Buddhism to be an important path. Their ability to visualize sacred places is inspiring. We love Tankha paintings, and different kinds of devotional arts, and feel we are devotional artists in a secular society. That involves having to discover your own icons or symbols.

If you reach down far enough, we're all made up of the same archetypes. Since our experience of transpersonal space, I believe there are structures that are universal. Joseph Campbell talked about what he called "core myths". As did Jung. If you go deep enough into yourself, you find yourself in a noisy place with a lot of other people. And if you draw symbols from there, you plug into a collective form of consciousness.

Any art object has a physical form, an emotional statement, and some kind of mental concept behind the work. Some artworks express an emotional mode, some are more cerebral; but even cerebral work has a "feeling tone", and even the most expressionistic works were painted on a rectangular canvas, and have some structure to them. Along with these qualities, there are other level, like awareness of the heart, and higher insights of psychic and spiritual reality. The most profound works of art, to my mind, reflect all these dimensions, they play on all of them.

I think many artists feel they are weaving some form of energy into their work. It's what psychometrists see when they "read" objects. There is an aesthetic psychometry each person does as they look at a work of art. Artworks are like batteries - if we're receptive, they can charge us. I've always felt all art contains some form of consciousness, because it has been manipulated by people. It's just the question of what awareness the artist and the viewer bring to it. My idea of reality is that there are many, many interpenetrating dimensions.

Allyson: What really touches you is work that operates on those many levels, including the material level. People with great ideas who don't know how to implement them are as badly off as those with great implementation, and no ideas. Visual art has to be implemented and formally produced in a communicative way.

I think a genuinely spiritual art has to be based upon experience. People who haven't had a transcendent experience usually refuse the entire subject. It's good to have a vocabulary, to be able to communicate on an intellectual level, but one needs to experience art arising from some inner source that is true, that is authentic.

Alex: There is a kind of "light weight" New Age painting - you know, luminous angelic beings floating around, glowing castles....it's nice, and its intention is to counter the abrasiveness in our daily lives. But sometimes the baby is thrown out with the bathwater, and all the deep cords that pull your heart are taken away. You can't eliminate the suffering of the world, and the experiences of death and mortality that give us reason to seek higher sources. When you eliminate the so-called negative aspects of life, concentrating only on positive images, you remain mired in the unintegrated experiences of darkness within yourself. I don't think genuine spiritual art can be based on saccharine imagery....it has to integrate more than that. This returns to what we were saying before, about functioning on various levels.

Lauren: Alex, how did the series of paintings The Sacred Mirrors come about?

Alex: The inspiration came from the mystical experience I described. I experienced what I call "The Universal Mind Lattice". I wanted to take the viewer there, but I felt I had to move through different dimensions of reality before arriving there.

The first panel in the series is called The Material World. It's a lead sheet, shaped into the silhouette of a person. The body's biochemistry has been hammered into the lead. Leaded mirrors surround it, containing the Periodic Table of the Elements. You see, we're welded into the material world by our relationship to the elements, all our bio-molecular interconnections with the world. And space and energy, time and matter - all are aspects of the material world.

These are material boundaries. The painting has actual mirrors in it, which are fractured, so when you look at yourself, you see a distorted image of yourself. If you try to get an entire glimpse of yourself, it's obscured by the leaden figure. Metaphorically, you cannot see yourself undistorted or unobscured in the material world.

After this, there are paintings about the different anatomical systems, the Skeletal System, the Nervous System, the Cardio-Vascular System, the Lymphatic System, and the visceral, the Muscular System.

These are beautiful real systems constantly at work inside of us. I thought of Jackson Pollock when I first saw the cardio-vascular system exposed; there were all these interconnected skeins and networks, all emanating from the pump of the heart. And there is the duality of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, the carbon-dioxide-oxygen exchange with the planet that is always going on, feeding each cell.

Lauren: I'm reminded that all this activity is going on "under the skin", constant activity of which we aren't even conscious, so even physically, we are veiled from ourselves.

Alex: Yes, or the processes that allow our consciousness to manifest are veiled.

Next I moved to the "skins", female and male, Caucasions, Africans, and Asians; because whenever you put skin on the anatomical systems, they become very distinct and individual, which is why there are so many problems. We see our differences, instead of our similarities. I wanted to give a tacit nod to those differences, and also invite the viewer to see himself or herself reflected in others, which is the intention of The Sacred Mirrors.

I broke the Series down into Body, Mind, and Spirit. The first seven paintings are The Body, the physical dimension. The Skins are the socio-political level, the dualities that exist on that plane.

We move to metaphysical anatomy with the Life Energy System, and the Psychic Energy System. The Psychic Energy System is the crux of the Series, because it shows inter-penetration of the physical body with the more esoteric energy systems. It has the acupuncture meridians and points, the chakras, and the Kabbalah Tree of Life - all of which are keyed to various aspects of the body. The Hebrew and Hindu physical-to-spiritual hierarchies are overlaid.

The Spiritual Energy System shows a more progressive dissolution between the Self and surrounding, which is reminiscent of the experience Allyson and I spoke of, the loss of boundaries. From there, the Series moves to the Universal Mind Lattice, where there is interconnection with infinite spheres of light. The figure is connected to all other beings and things.

The backdrop The Universal Mind Lattice is played upon is The Void, which is what the next painting is about. Buddhists speak of the Void and Clear Light existing together. I wanted to make this image, but at that point it had to veer into archetypal representation. There was no way to symbolize it as an actual experience. I had to resort to symbols. So I used the Tibetan
symbol of the Kalachakra in the center, which is about transmutation of the elements by the principle of emptiness. That's why it is surrounded by the elements of earth, fire, wind and water.

The next painting is Avalokitesvara. Tantric teachings say that the infinite compassion of the Bodhisattva is the same as Voidness. This is one of the highest teachings, the understanding that boundless love is the ground of being from which all things come. The Void represents how far one can go to get off the Wheel of Life. You can go to Voidness and dwell there, or the Universal Mind Lattice, and dwell there.....to me, the highest teachings are those that speak of returning to aid the suffering of the world. That's what Avalokitesvara did, sprouting a thousand arms and hands to help the world with an eye of unobstructed vision in each palm.

The Sacred Mirrors hopefully takes one on a journey. Through various levels, back to the world, with a revised notion of oneself and ones surroundings. Because, if you understand the spiritual energy systems, and the social manifestations of people, the "skins", and physical being, you still won't understand life's purpose. The great teachers of the spiritual traditions, the Bodhisattvas, provide a moral anatomy, systems allowing us to know our life paths, what is right and what is wrong. They elevate us in ways simply knowing about your cardio-vascular system cannot.

The final painting in the series is a Mirror, on which has been inscribed a sunburst. Inside the sunburst I engraved a word: "God". It's located in the heart region. The meaning of The Sacred Mirrors is, in essence, very simple. To see ourselves, and the world around us, as sacred.

I hope people can be affected by the work in some way that catalyzes their own spiritual growth. That's what makes a work of art "transformative"; it has an intention towards transformation locked into its structure. But the reason we're making art is as a devotional practice - it's a way to demonstrate the unity we feel with all other beings.

Lauren: You have also done, and continue to do, performance art, including a performance I saw a documentation of called Burnt Offering.

Alex: Burnt Offering was about burning through layers of myself. In it, I enacted three different "Fire Sculptures". The first was a big picture of my face with a third eye. It started with a propane torch behind the picture, which burned through the third eye and eventually burned the whole face away.

In the second Sculpture, I read from three different sacred books: the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, and the Bible. After reading a passage from each, I put the book in an urn to burn it. So, I burnt the holy books together in the same urn, and mixed the ashes together to form sacred ash. I was trying to "burn down to the essence" of all these different teachings. I then rubbed the ashes all over my body, which was already covered with blood.

Lauren: Why blood?

Alex: I don't always know why I do these things! But looking back, I think I can say that it was about being physical. The "Fire Sculptures" were rituals about the burning away of ego and form, through the revelation of the third, or "inner eye". Flames represent the consciousness that engulfs all of the wisdom teachings, and reduces them to a similar substance. By rubbing the "residue" or ashes of those teachings all over oneself, one's "bloody physical ness" is transformed into a more metaphysical nature.

In the last "Fire Sculpture", I had seven skulls surrounding me, which symbolized the different chakras. They were in a semi-circle in front of me, and above me was a skeleton I lit on fire. It was the final burning away and illumination of a kind of surrogate self.

Lauren: In your painting Holy Fire, you make much use of the element of Fire.

Alex: The Flame is consciousness. Any experience that expands awareness can be a purifying experience - bathing in the "holy fire". It's kind of funny, by the way, but when I work with fire imagery, I do seem to get feverish! When I was working on Holy Fire, I spent two weeks in a hot, feverish state, because I was suffering from an infection. Allyson made all the sculptures for the Burnt Offering performances, because I had a very high fever then too!

Lauren: The two of you often do performances together. In Prayer Wheel, you were tied together, and performed a walking meditation in a circle, making a living "prayer wheel".

Allyson: We've done a number of performances in which we set up a tableau, and activate it by being in it.

Alex: A Prayer Wheel is an engine for spiritual energy, that's what it symbolizes. It's meant to radiate an affirmation of the source of Spirit: "Oh Hail the Jewel in the Lotus, Om Mani Padme Hum", the jewel of spiritual being in the lotus of the unfolding mind. By repeating the mantra in the context of a huge prayer wheel, we felt like a generator. Allyson and I represented male and female polarities, and we were flanked by symbols of birth and death. Because everyone has both elements within them - and at every moment we're somewhere between birth and death, moving around the Wheel.

Copyright 1989, 2005 Lauren Raine.

Reflections on Visioning

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
The master doesn't seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
she is present, and can welcome all things.

 Lao-Tzu

 I've recently discovered a way to publish, inexpensively, my RAINBOW BRIDGE ORACLE cards, and so have given myself the luxury of working on a really nice book to accompany the deck.......this project has been in the works for 20 years, so needless to say, I never really thought it would get published, so this is a surprise.  Going back to these cards is like re-visiting a younger self, trying to  understand her.  I can't say I do.  But I do see that,  the minute I re-engaged with this (for me) ancient project, many colored (rainbow) threads of synchronicity began to weave around me!


The Goddess is all about creativity.  Begin to create, throw in some excitement to flavor the mix, and the universe will nudge you along.  So I entirely believe.

I've created 7 new cards, and am having a hard time writing about them.  I'm actually a visual thinker, and writing is always rather excruciating for me.  So, in the midst of a Bon Mot, wham, a power outage. When that happens, there's nothing to do but take a small vacation, so I went downtown to the studio to sweep the floor, since I'm trying to get it rented.

In walked Kristy, who is doing a series of paintings about the Tarot!  She wanted me to see her new painting in the series, and in the course of visiting her studio, she asked me if I was going to be in a show about Water (we think about water a lot, here in the Southwest).......it seemed I only had two hours left  to bring work to the gallery.

 I  rushed to Raices Teller, where a conversation ensued about my experience last year with the Waters of the World ritual at the Goddess Conference in Glastonbury.   I have a vial of the "holy water"  from the ritual, the White Spring and the Chalice Well.  One of the curators asked  if I had anything I could bring to the show about that experience.

Immediately a distinct vision of a little shrine popped into my head, and now I have two days to make it! 

I brought the "Waters of the World" with me on the plane, carrying the essence of those holy places and the joined waters from around the world to share its beautiful blessing.  Now I find myself thinking about "visioning". To be an artist is to make a career of it, but we are all the artists of our lives, and when we engage the mythic mind, we find ourselves woven into the rainbow threads of many other lives as well.  There's  a thread dangling around me these days, as I honestly don't know what to do with my life anymore..........I'm trying to catch it.......over the rainbow...........

Reflections on Visioning

"Spider Woman's Hands" - 2007 (Alden Dow Fellowship)

Back in Truth or Consequences for a little while, I find grief, and a feeling of lack of purpose are my frank companions. I miss my brother. There are many things I wish I could have said to him, when I had the chance.

I'm about as psychic as a brick these days (and perhaps that is unfair to bricks, since I have never actually had an intimate conversation with one.) But that is why I was pleased when a bit of magic happened this morning.

"Spider Woman's Hands" - Mississippian Gorget, ca 1300 ad.

I was in my studio trying to finish up the paper I will be reading at the Claremont Conference on Pagan Studies soon - it's on Spider Woman, of course. Last night I was up late trying to find out (unsuccessfully) who or from where the "prophecy of the return of the Spider Woman" came from. I confess, writing academic papers is frustrating to me, and so I wander around the vicinity of the typewriter, taking every chance to get distracted. So I bent down to check on the heater, and (I swear!) a tiny little brown spider fell down on it's web seemingly from the top of my head! I carefully positioned a plate under my nose to catch it, and then moved it to the window to watch it. Once again, a little spider (I would be alarmed, were it ever a large one) has dropped down from my head or my hat right before my nose. Spiders have done some pretty interesting things around me in the past few months.........

I like to think it's Spider Woman's way of saying "hello".

I've been thinking about visions. There was a time when I was blessed with several significant visions (by visions, I mean visionary experiences had while in a conscious or voluntary trance state, and not while asleep) that have very much informed my life and my art.

I'd like to say that visions are Grace, divine gifts. Among the Lakota, long preparations were made for the Vision Quest, in order to invite visions, and when a vision occurred it was shared collectively, discussed, and determined if it had prophetic or ceremonial significance for not only the individual recipient, but for the entire tribe. This is something we have entirely lost, and indeed, we cannot differentiate between someone who has had a true vision (which, in native wisdom, would be considered a gift), and a schizophrenic.

(I think of the great visions of St. Teresa, or the works of Hildegaard Von Bingham. I do not think they would fare so well in today's world.)

"The Universal Mind Lattice", Alex Grey

I remember a conversation years ago in Brooklyn with Alex and Allyson Grey about the shared vision they had while taking LSD. Their need to communicate that vision resulted in "THE SACRED MIRRORS". The need to understand it set them on their spiritual path (by the way, they have recently bought a retreat center in upstate NY where they are planning on housing the Sacred Mirrors and developing a center for sacred arts. Visit the link above to learn more.)

Here's the point - true visionary experience is meant to be shared. Art is one way, ceremony or ritual is another. To be given true vision, which is archetypal, collective, and exists on multiple layers of meaning, and then deny it's value, is an enormous waste. So here I am this morning (and I just noticed a single shining transparent spider thread stretching from my window pane to some infinite point into the air..........well, I've been feeling lately that these gifts I need to share, communicate. A blog is a good place to start; maybe someday I can produce a few paintings as well.

PATTERNS

This occurred in 1989. I was driving on an interstate in Virginia heading north. I became very tired, and pulled off the road. Almost immediately, I fell into a half-sleeping, half-trance state.

My little red Toyota pick up began to fly! It seemed as if it could fly not only through distance but perhaps through time as well. I looked down and I was over a green landscape, green and misty. Below I saw patterns of dolmens laid out in a spiral. There were lines of people who were coming up a hill toward that spiral pattern, reverently, as if in a ceremonial procession.
Then I was in a Southwestern landscape. I found myself contemplating petroglyphs on a cliff - spirals, figures, circles, layers of petroglyphs that receded into the rock face. And then I was flying over Los Angeles! I saw freeways making vast, snakelike patterns across the land, culminating in a figure eight infinity sign. What this means to me is that the living Earth, Gaia, speaks through the land, and through us, across the ages - even now, unseen, ever present.

And then I opened my eyes to a soft Virginia morning. In the "Song of Medusa" (with the voice of my character "Sibyl") I described that vision, from the imaginary perspective of a Neolithic shaman):

"I do not know the meaning of such a vision; perhaps it belongs to some distant past or a future beyond imagining. But I do believe this: the Song of Her purposes is written upon the land in all places, and in all times."

THE SONG OF MEDUSA, Lauren Raine & Duncan Eagleson

WHITE TARA

This vision came with help from a teacher of mine, Jewel. Jewel is a true shaman, who lives on her land which she has developed as a teaching center, THE SOURCE, in Shutesbury, Massachusetts. When I met Jewell I was living in Brattleboro, Vermont. I was divorcing from my former husband, Duncan, and was full of the grief, anger, and remorse that comes with the ending of a marriage.

I went to see Jewell for an energy healing. When she put me on her table, she said prayers before she began.

I slipped into a trance state - it seemed as if I was watching short clips from movies, without any sound. I saw African men drumming around a fire, then the body of an emaciated black woman lying on a bed, a ceremonial room of some kind with thousands of orange marigolds, a white man, balding and heavyset with glasses, and many more.

At some point, I felt I was pulled backward, given some distance, so that these "movie clips" became like a patchwork quilt, all occurring at once. I remember thinking how beautiful they were from that perspective.

Suddenly, a Great Being arrived. I cannot actually describe that presence, because there was no form - she was composed of light. The only identification I felt I could make was that she was female. She didn't speak to me, only radiated the most intense compassion I have ever felt. She also radiated a profound sense of humor! It was as if she was saying, "Look Lauren, take a good look at this. It's going to be alright. You'll meet again. Don't take on so."

I shall never forget the power of that radiant being. I later learned that Jewell begins her sessions with prayers to the Goddess Tara. And to me, that was the Goddess White Tara; which is why I have prayed to her and tried to honor her with my masks ever since. And,come to think of it. I've been very fortunate in that way!

Om Tare Tu Tare Tare Soha

Mana Youngbear as "Tara", 2004