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Posts Tagged ‘transcendence’

The vapours of heaven (images and words)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 20, 2015| 2 Comments »

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THE VAPOURS OF HEAVEN

 

Shall they stray far,
These wandered thoughts,
Drenched with the vapours of heaven?
Shall they, distilled, sublimate,
Take new form, grow winged
Then smiling, dissolve?

Shall they, folded,
Nest upon timeless light.
Sleep, and wake golden,
Luminous, singing?
Shall they, without surcease,
Dance eternal energies,
Still named, at home
On vast, breathing cascades
Of space?

Shall they, (these thoughts),
Turn swallows, spin as swifts,
Light as thistledown, rise
Like willowherb, weightless,
A drift in summer,
A slow gentle breeze
Bird-filled?

Shall they stretch, sprout nerves,
Become sensible, grow good souls
With new names, find mouths
And lips and tongue
And sing their own song?

The vapours of heaven:
A saffron casket, rainbow-locked.
Small whispered bells,
Honey-lipped bees.

A sky stretched
To blue transparency.
A tent with purpose,
An unseen sea,
Scaled skin of cloud.

In amongst and between,
Within cloud and moving mists,
Droplets suspended awaiting surface:
To acquire direction, to know gravity,
To locate tidal choirs.

It is all music, all music,
Nothing but song.

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These images are taken from a series of ink drawings, scanned and photographically enlarged to reveal strange details. The revealing of other structures formed a parallel word stream imagining thought/word becoming sentient of themselves, hence the text, as one possible accompaniment to the images. (Other possibilities included star names or quotes from the works of John Dee). Some of the images are pixelating because of extreme enlargement, so these I may remake as pencil drawings…

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Ascent of the Soul through the Spheres ( part 4 )

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 12, 2014| 2 Comments »

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Spera iovis, Jupiter

An ineffable thunder.
A benevolent sky untouchable,
Bewashed with holy white.
His eye, from that smoky height,
Benevolent, or careless.
Sucking up breath, bellows,
A bull in heat, a vast progenitor
Bestowing fast waters, furious light.

A plunger, a pummeller, a fondler
Of breasted mountains, a piercer
Of earth’s deep, warm valleys.

The biology of deity: what is fecund
Evolves to the remote ineffable.
The lusty roarer, to righteous, wrathful judgment.

Template to transcendence, he dabbles yet
And dribbles his pleasures in little lives
Spread-legged, surprised by glory.
Panting and flattered by the fierce blast
Of his rumbled, lascivious breath,
His weight borne down and admitted.

So it is a face of infinity,
A voice vague with distance,
A beam breaking clouds,
A covenant, a breaking into and out of,
Grandiose lusts and transfiguring flesh,
A feast of flesh for formless air, a cold, clear possession.

No other face but a storm of thunder and a sudden cloud,
An animal roar, a shower of gold.
All encompassing as air, as mountain squall, a rush of cold water,
As clay turned incense, as sacrificial fire on beacon top.

The placation and violence of an unseen height. From there is sought
Return of revolutions, approving victories, an evolution
Of sorts and measures.
An eagle’s wing, a single feather, a sharp beak, a clutching claw.
A rosary of names heroic, a prayer of appeasement and summoning.

Above all, and through it all,
A mystery of heaving curtains,
A spotlit stage with screaming plot,
A certain, definitive gravity, the thunderer.

A strange evolution it is from dark cloud and downpour
To remote, inviolable vastness.
But they all do shuffle and elbow eternally,
These interferers, these hungry, unconcerned
Bickering departmental managers,
Jealous and lusty,
Breeding prophets and demigods in casual catastrophe.
They run off with themselves, whooping and roaring,
Eternal adolescents, hormonally sparkling, unrestrained
In all their sudden, bright passions.
Free from opprobrium, earthy,celestial gardens of delight.

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Pour and Fall

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on November 16, 2013| 3 Comments »

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POUR

The air is cool and still
Unmoved by the threaded rain,
Weighed straight and fast.

A roar upon the roof,
Laughter in the gutters:
A gurgled drunk descent,
Spun down to dark earth.

A balance of letting go,
A balance of remaining.
A slow exhalation.

—

FALL

Leaf fall
Thought fall
Heart fall.
Red, bruised,
Lip curled.
Nothing,
But to seek
The peace beneath joy,
The peace beneath sorrow.
This cold, empty sky.
This wordless depth.

—-

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Recitation 1 (fragments)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 8, 2013| 4 Comments »

I have just recently turned my attention back to a project called (at the moment) “Recitation of the Names of Night ( or Darkness)”, pulling together black and white graphics and words to create an art book project. How far it will get, who knows…..
These received texts will be interspersed amongst images, some as staightforward text, some as worked and layered artworks. ( “received” as in: come out of the blue, unbidden, uncensored, unformed, a fleeting landscape of idea cuaght from a speeding moment)…

RECITATION (1)

The Topography of Night

The topography of Night
The slopes of darkness
Its pools, its shadows,
Its steep contours, its melodies,
Its mists and clouds.
To map its creatures
To collate its vocabulary
To define with certainty
Its presence and its absence.
To narrate its brilliance,
Its luminous resonant self,
Its fear-filled halls,
Its echoing steps, its
Vague promises, its
Certain threats,
Its embraces, its charms,
Its crevices, its lascivious
Gestures, its names,
Its names,
Its names.

—-

Epidermis

She moves,
Ligament and skin
Extending, taughtening,
Flex, reflex, a brushing
Of skin on skin.
Dark matter, dark mother,
Between all things,
Behind and within,
Void and immanent,
An unexpected punchline
Ghosting us,
Rapidly, inevitably,
Collapsing neat equations,
Smug cosmologies.
The sound of silk sliding
On silk, tongue across lips.

—-

Vessel

A bowl, a cup. A simple thing echoing the two hands together. A nutritious function. The hands, the skull, the sky. Clay pressed to hold emptiness and fullness. Progenitor, act of creation. Made of clay, pinches of dust kissed, mated, caressed, formed. Fingertips pressing warm cavities, pliant, obedient, holding still, spun, stroked, admitted, allowed. The scent of iron and sweat and earth.

—–

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Atom Heart Mother

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 18, 2013| 3 Comments »

Atom – Heart – Mother
(Third object of transcendence).

Dark moon.
There is nothing to measure
The passing or staying of time.

A pewter plate, leaden glow heaviness
Is upon me,
Upon which ants crawl –
An incessant hunt
For meaning’s addictive
sweet crumbs.

No silver sickle,
No thin cold sharp edge to sever
Glutinous swags of thought.

Tedious, this circularity,
This inability to dive
Beyond the debris.

No owls,
No bats outside.
All opposition slain
To the blundering flight of our own
Monochromatic, monotheistic,
Magnificently naive self-appointment
As pinnacle and paragon.
The Mysteries and miracles,
Only annoying flies bouncing off
Dirty panes of glass.
The backroom boys of nightmare,
Gagged and emasculated
Now that we load
The silver bullets of rationality.
Stallions and nightmares, wild kelpies
That would drag us screaming
Below the dark, still, loch waters,
Consigned to flickering square screens.
Insanity banished,
The moths of eternity
Shattered, spiralling torches,
The quenchless fire of plutonium:
Endless yuga
Of sudden and slow, bright death.

Dark moon.
Nothing to see here.
Stars hidden
Awaiting Great Time,
O Mother of Darkness.

Clouds part a clearing,
A darker nothing beyond grey nothing.
A pause.

Travel down peripheral paths, abandoned, webbed, forgotten.
Away from the echoing vestibules and cavities trawling feckless thought.
Rooted through the feet, an anchoring of sober light.
With breath,
A river of acquiescence
Gravitates down
To our hidden heart,
soil,
solid,
matter,
mother.

A silver sewing,
A phosphorescent bond,
An electric blue tang
Of diving clarity.
An exhalation in the centre of stillness,
Stratigraphies of forgiveness,
Of forgetting, of remembering.

New wings spread
Flexed wide, descending
Upon the winds
Of interior light.
A song bursts upwards
That is a dance.

The three ways, the three channels,
The three poisons,
Become one tree
Vast and sheltering,
at once seed and fruit.
Branching senses interweave,
A galactic arch.
Subatomic tendrils reach sustenance,
abundance, belonging
And are cherished.

Sleep and the Sleeper
A moon in shadow
A silver tree ringing with light
A forest of stars.
Bitterness, a blessing
That wakes and warns.

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Maha Ratri, the Great Night.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 14, 2013| Leave a Comment »

MAHARATRI – Great Night

Continuing my exploration of the Mahavidyas, this piece tracks and picks out words, phrases and ideas from Danielou’s work. I don’t know how it will stand by itself for those not familiar with any of the imagery or symbolism, but for me it is acting as a trigger and an introduction to how both visuals and text might develop in the future.

Object of transcendence. Maha Ratri 1

1
Eternity, ten nights long
Five for the god,
Five for the goddess.
The power of Siva –
To know it, one word,
No other word were needed.

Ten objects:
The divine night, destiny mapped,
Destruction mirrored,
Fear revealed.
The power of time,
The last manacle of sky iron,
Melted, irrelevant in the bliss
Of our supreme nonexistence.

2
The state of deep sleep,
Our little dream, ocean’s drop
Of perfect quiescence,
Nothing remaining,
Not time acting on,
But time itself:
Absolute night.

Beyond the beyond,
Sleeper withdrawing
Into the power of time,
Itself.
Immensity,
A diadem of illusion:
Licks of lightning
Flickering
At the corners of the sea,
Surface, iridescent, unmoved.

This absolute night,
The night of destruction,
When things
That are not things,
When the objects
Of our philosophies,
When even the bare bones
Of is and now,
Slide and smudge
Decorating no longer
The resounding passageways
Of thought,
The geometries
Of measured edge.

For there is now one thing
That is the only thing,
A no thing,
A perfect surface
Curving to infinity,
Our lady
Of the spheres,
Resplendent emptiness.
The little light
That does nothing but divide,
Distend, distort,
And shatter into matter
Finally engulfed,
By the Giver.

Returning in the evening
All the birds nest in happiness,
All nestle to the welcome night,
Enfolded by calm.
All, all come to rest
Upon her lap-
Mother of Happiness,
Mother of Night.

( I shall step into the still,
mild darkness,
the rush of silent air,
fragrant after a day of rain.
Feel my purpose dissolve,
my need and reasons waver,
words and names becoming uncertain,
then soon submerged.
Passing clouds,
passing clouds).

3
Time
That tears asunder
All things,
Destroyer of worlds,
She herself
Is your dance.

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Great Time and the spinning of form

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

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The Ten Mahavidyas

The mahavidyas, or “great wisdoms”, “wisdom goddesses”, or “Ten objects of Transcendent Wisdom” is a medieval Indian system of metaphysical thought that brings together aspects of goddess energy in a powerful and evocative manner. In certain aspects it falls outside the more familiar Hindu orthodoxy, whilst deepening and adding commentary to the esoteric traditions of the Himalayan region.

I first came across the Mahavidyas in my fourth year at the University of Edinburgh and was drawn to the powerful imagery- especially as presented in Alain Danielou’s “Hindu Polytheism”- so that I incorporated elements of symbolism in my sculpture projects. At the time I was using the image of the bowl a lot in my work and it seemed an ideal form to express the numinous within the familiar. A container of space, requiring emptiness to define itself, the bowl has often been employed as a metaphor for the polarity of existence.
Much more recently I was asked to make images representing each Mahavidya in the same way that I found symbolic forms for tree energies. It took a while to consider. It is one thing tuning into a tree energy and seeing how to visually freeze that unique energy dance, it is a different matter of scale to do the same to a powerful universal energy presence. Resolution came when I acknowledged that the Mahavidya energy patterns are transgender, transhuman, transspatial, transtemporal, transcultural entities. In other words, it was not necessary to get “permission” or authentication to begin this work. They do not belong to any one species or gender or time or theology, though their symbolic references will be culturally specific. I am possessed wholly by these energies as I am with the frequencies of the electro-magnetic spectrum. I do not need to achieve knowledge or understanding outside of myself. In fact they have a more permanent existence than what I consider to be my own personal reality.

MAHAKALI

Great Time
Time accumulating,
Licking
Laughing.
Disintegrates
your considerate sciences,
Your careful measured certainty.

Unfettered
Definitions cease.
Knowing Her
There is nothing else to know.

Beyond subatomic passion,
Endless rest, but awake.

Scurrilous,
Untramelled Reality,
Radiant darkness
Embedded, entangled,
Woven into solidity

Solid time
Still time
Waiting time.
Ungraspable, unavoidable

Warm red tongue
Licking your soul.
Warm lips clasping.

Atrocious vastness,
Contigious unity,
Invisible light
Revealed.

Exploding souls
Supernovae.

The image above is one of a series of prints I made of the Mahavidyas and related energies. This one is Kali, the Great Night of Time, Deathless Silence, Perfect Bright Darkness. Kali means ‘time’.
Though these energies are personified and worshipped as deities, they transcend all human categorisation and all cultural niceties. They are raw reality, which is why they are so scary! Any image is Mahakali, every concept is Mahakali. This image I have made is therefore perfectly MahaKali, though not exclusively so!!

If you are interested inseeing the other images or purchasing a few(!!) please go to click here

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