“Lisa Streitfeld’s account of her own ever-evolving consciousness is not for the faint – or, for that matter, the hard – of heart. Streitfeld merges lived experience with apparently dreamed speculation to propose that we return to the spirit of the goddess – and, in true feminist fashion, makes the proposal by living it, by putting it in the first person singular and allowing it to radiate out to the third person plural. Streitfeld’s “official” role as an art critic in and around New York proves less strait jacket than springboard to her embrace of a visionary, even hallucinatory, melding of minds and symbols: she is as able to find portent and vital metaphor in her relationships with artists and art-world types as she is in her interactions with hippies, shamans, itinerants, and the indigenous people she encounters in her journeys. Daughter of a New Age seer, Streitfeld does not take her mission, much less her Weltanschauung, lightly; but she does take it exuberantly, and is not afraid to crash to the ground with as much energy as she launches herself into the heavens. Magic realism meets urban mysticism in Streitfeld’s recounting. Her fever is infectious.”

Peter Frank

Editor, THE magazine Los Angeles

Senior Curator, Riverside Art Museum

I began my exploration of Dublin with an impromptu meeting with a Druid at the train station.  He assured me that there is no obvious “pagan movement’ in Ireland, as those who emerge with their gifts are quickly “corrupted!”  Same problem the world over.  Secrecy has its purpose.

Liam O'Birn

Half Scot and half Irish, he was soooo intense, utterly magikal and a gentleman to boot!  A descendent of the Aquarian Robert Burns, pioneer of the Romantic movement and Scotland’s national poet, he walked me to the Writer’s Museum, right around the corner from my hotel, and posed for my camera in an apt spot, considering his poetic heritage, before the doors of the Hugh Lane Gallery, advertising the opening of a new Francis Bacon exhibit!

A terrible beauty he was…

And my final encounter in Dublin, was another terrible beauty, the Black Madonna known as Our Lady of Dublin

The Shrine of Our Lady of Dublin Whitefriar Street Church

The statue of Our Lady of Dublin with the Christ child is of sixteenth century origin and, after the sacking of the Abbey in 1539, was hidden and preserved. It was found by Fr John Spratt in 1824 and brought to Whitefriar Street Church. The history of its survival is indicative of a persevering faith in the people and the statue is dear to Dubliners and others alike. The feastday of Our Lady of Dublin is celebrated on September 8 which is also the date of the Birthday of Our Lady. For full text, click here.

Our Lady of Dublin

And this full circle brings me to another closed circle, this blog cycle which began under Venus conjunct the New Moon in Taurus, and ends with Venus conjunct the New Moon in Scorpio.

At the New Moon, I deliver a new birth, my book Kundalini’s Daughter accompanied by a new blog with the same name.  You can tune in at http//kundalinisdaughter.wordpress.com

Thank you to all my readers for engaging in this rite of uniting Heaven and Earth.  Our gallery exhibition has reverberated through cyberspace during the six months of this experiment and our goal has been nothing less than bringing real change to the culture.  In time we shall see what impact, if any, we have had.

Blessed be!

We departed from the Newgrange hotel after breakfast and passed through innumerable shades of green…

\

Meath countryside

…to arrive at the place where the Spring Equinox was celebrated!

Loughcrew, the Hill of the Witch. Silabh Na Cailli.  Caelli would seem to be derived from Kali, the Hindu name for the Dark Goddess!

The story is this: She jumped three hills to get to the fourth, then fell and was buried on Patricktown Hll.  Sounds like the story of the feminine being sacrificed to the patriarchy!

We walked up one of the four hills of Longhcrew, home to 40 tombs.

I came upon the mushrooms which could have well provided the hallucinagins for the ritual making.

Magic mushroon? I didn't find out.

Our intrepid guide had the key, so we could enter this magical place, as if we arrived for the first time, in illo tempore…

Opening the gate

rock carvings inside the mound

The sacred geometry inside was a cross and this opening was east to capture the light of the Spring Equinox as it passed through the entrance which was illuminated by quartz crystal and provided  the hexagonal shaped light representing the moment of awakening in Spring!

corner depicting the precise sacred geometry of the mound interior

Our intrepid guide, Ciarian Bennett, president of the Irish chapter of AICA, led us inside (a rare treat) the sacred sites of Ireland commemorating the New Year (Winter Solstice) and Rebirth (Spring Equinox)  http://www.knowth.com/dowth.htm

Newgrange model, Visitor's Center

Standing Stone before Newgrange entrance, most likely used for astronomical marking

Entrance to Newgrange

These stones were most likely placed for astronomical markings.

On the moment of the Winter Solstice, the sunlight passes through the entrance to reach the end of the passage.

Rear Stone marking where the Sun passes to illuminate the interior on the Winter Solstice, Newgrange

The interior is a magnificent feat of construction.  We gained access but were not permitted to take photo-graphs.

It was in the shape of a cross with a ceiling as an inverted ziggaret.  I counted seven levels with sacred geometry of the hexagon, pentagram and square.  This gave me a real jolt, entirely unexpected.  Turning off the interior lights, we were in complete darkness.  The guide demonstrated how the sunlight would enter during the Solstice to hit the rear of the interior space where there was a wall relief of three spirals.

Taking in the sacred geometry, I was convinced that this “tomb” was used for ritual ceremony, the death and rebirth of the god experienced precisely at the Return of the Light during the Winter Solstice.  In this way, the human psyche could feel at one with the gods, by experiencing the cosmological initiation of  of death and rebirth at the New Year!  This moment of suspension between the two conditions of opposites — death and birth — was the experience of the Sacred Marriage.  What the ancients did through rituals, we contemporary secular humans are attempting to perform through sex!

"Crossroad" entrance to Tara

We entered Tara, the site worshipping the Death Goddess, and encountered a living goddess…

Belinda Quirke, director of the Solstice Centre in Navan

And there was Tara, whose very name evokes the Dark Goddess!

Tara, the elevated womb

Tara's entrance

And her Consort

Her Consort...

And here we had the Sacred Marriage Rite on the very day of the “lifting of the veils” between the worlds of the material and the spirit!

Channeling the Spirits on top of Tara

And this was my personal bid to enter the universal rite of the Sacred Marriage.  The spirits gathered around as I renewed the ancient ritual of God and Goddess celebrated on All Hallows Eve as the lifting of the veil between worlds…the crossover point between the Fall Equinox when Persephone makes her descent and Winter Solstice when she begins her return…

Tara grave site

Until the Return at the Winter Solstice…

Solstice Centre in Navan

What a divine experience, to connect with All Hallows Eve at its source!

During the evening festivities, the Goddess was in full bloom!

D

All Hallows Eve at New Grange Hotel

Complete with a touch of irony…

Susana, the Argentine critic from France

Rosslyn Chapel, Scotland

On this day, I took the bus to the village of Roslin and combed Rosslyn Chapel inside and out, seeking the “sacred in the material” that would connect this magnificent creation of William St. Clair to H.P.’s Knights Templar legacy.

On the exterior wall is a carving of an initiation, linking the Masonic builders of the chapel builder (foreground) with the Knights Templar (in characteristic attire with the cross on the front).

Through my research into HP’s geneology, I already discovered the connection between the  two families.  The first William St. Clair (Sinclair) was a friend of Hughes de Payans, who not only accompanied him on a Crusade but married his daughter!

H.P.’s earlier ancestor was a priest in the Temple of Solomon. This explains the impetus for  Hughes de Payans to found the Knights Templar and launch the Crusades to retrieve the Holy Lands.  Moreover, the order was unique in that members were both warriors (body) and monks (spirit), and therefore were living icons of the Sacred Marriage of Heaven and Earth at a time that the official Church hierarchy denied sacred in matter, along with the divine feminine.

The ancient rites of the Sacred Marriage were embedded into the Holy of the Holies of Solomon’s Temple, where the Templars resided during the Crusades.  In their book The Second Messiah (Barnes and Noble Books 2000) Christopher Knight and Richard Lomas theorize that the Rosslyn Chapel was never meant to be the apse of a cathedral but actually a replica of Solomon’s Temple, complete with the still standing but crumbing front exterior wall.

Rosslyn Chapel exterior front wall

The chapel’s tormented history includes: Cromwell using the chapel as a stable for his horses (!); destruction of original statues by English invaders; and misguided attempt at preservation by painting concrete over the original sandstone interior.  Despite these assaults on its beauty, I still managed to locate key symbols within the architecture which were resurrected for the historic Black Madonna exhibition at HP Garcia gallery in New York City.

Primarily, there is the prominent X, which I wrote about in the catalog essay (http://blackmadonna2009.wordpress.com/black-madonna-the-great-work/) as the early Christian symbol of the Sacred Marriage, the unity of Chalice/feminine (downward pointing triangle) and blade (upward pointing triangle):

X in the window of Rosslyn Chapel

Mark Wiener and I had no knowledge of this symbol when we created the signature image Still Life in Red for the exhibition.

Mark Wiener, "Still Life in Red" mixed media, 2009

Then, there was the Templar Cross, which was already established in the design of HP Garcia Gallery.

Templar Cross above the front entrance of Rosslyn Chapel

But what was unexpected was the appearance of the Yod embedded within the sacred geometry of the original structure.  The Yod, which is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is known as the Finger of God, which bestows bounty from heaven to those who are able to complete the alchemical transfusion of spirit into matter!!

Yod embedded in the center of the chapel window

The Yod represents the divine hand of destiny, marking a convergence in which all possibilities can be realized as a multidimensional unfolding of spirit into matter.

I have been working consciously with the astrological Yod for the dozen years of my avant-garde experiment of applying the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to the matter of an emerging 21st century archetype.  This was the topic of the paper I delivered for the 2009 AICA International Congress (the paper will be posted at  http://www.aica.ie/?

Eros Consciousness diagram from Lisa Paul Streitfeldl's "Applying the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to 21st Century Art"

This holistic integration of Sacred and Matter (X) and Manifestation Process (Yod) is contained in the chapel’s Keystone (below).

Rosslyn Chapel Keystone

An interesting bit of contemporary lore I picked up during the tour:  the makers of The Da Vinci Code film were so intent on having the Seal of Solomon symbol of the Sacred Marriage in their film that they stuck one on the wall above the entrance to the crypt where they filmed the final scene of the movie.  It left a mark!

In their quest to uncover this symbolic link between Rosslyn Chapel and the past, Knight and Lomas claim that the Seal of Solomon is embedded in the  construction by way of the column placement, but that leaves position for the downward pointing triangle in the center of the floor.  I asked the guides if there could be something on the floor marking the spot and they told me that the rugged were just picked up: no mark of any kind was found. Debunkers of this theory point out that a hexagon could be marked within any square space!

Having a Seal of Solomon inside the Chapel would have been far too obvious of a signal to its true orientation and would have been long ago destroyed by invaders. The makers were far too brilliant for that.  Instead, they combined the X and the Y (Yod) to create a more esoteric symbol of the Sacred Marriage, readily available for a pioneering art critic to discover.  Within the proper timing, clearly!

And my personal Yods which drove my process of discovery was triggered in two places by transits of the Sun, Mercury and Saturn on the day of my visit.

Two Yods (natal and progressed chart) triggered by Saturn, Mercury and the Sun

High Street scene, Edinburgh

“For the secret power of the Mysteries is within the signs.  Any person attaining to natural or supernatural states by the process of development, if his heart be untuned and his mind withdrawn from the Divine or human within him, that power becomes a power of evil instead of a power of good.  An unfaithful initiate, in the degree of Mysteries he has attained, is capable, by virtue of his antecedent preparations and processes, of diverting the power to unholy, demoniacal, astral or dangerous uses…” [H.E. Sampson quoted in David V. Barrett, Secret Societies, p. 303, Carroll & Graf Publishers (NY, NY) 2007.]

Edinburgh, October 24-25.  I was quite unprepared for the spell that this city cast upon me during my aptly timed first visit.  In the days leading up to All Hallows Eve (Halloween), the energy was in exaltation, with ghoulish tales and imagery seeking through the cracks of the  old town where I passed my weekend.

Medieval edifices on High Street seemingly intact from their ages ago construction wrapped me in a mysterious lure.  It was like being on a movie set.  Deep, mysterious and enthralling.  As I  have always viewed my adventures as a “film in the making,” how could I have NOT been captured by the spell of this city!?  Every High Street pub, it seemed, had a plaque relating an idiosyncratic  history something like: “this was the last stop on the way to the gallows.”

Who needs a ghost tour when you can encounter any number of assorted spirits in the antiquated yet exceedingly well preserved pubs dotting High Street!

Yet, this gated city was also a seat of the Enlightenment that managed to fight off both British invaders and the hegemony of the Church.  For I had come to make a pilgrimage to Roslyn Chapel and therefore was prepared to confront the guardians of the Secret Societies to uncode their Mysteries for myself.  It promised to be a significant close to my Black Madonna adventure. guided as it was by my investigation into H.P. Garcia’s family lineage.  The ultimate discovery, I sought in doing the physical footwork to complete this two decade   Sojourn of Truth, was guiding me towards the moment where I would toss my bid, as a critic of the avant-garde fortified by the underground stream, to finally go Mainstream!

This was rolled out before me during my impromptu meeting with Alan Muir. The sharp Glasgow humor of this retired solicitor and political commentator burst the bubble of my burgeoning fantasy of penetrating into the heart of the Secret Societies that, at least for me, best characterize this illustrious city, where I might add, I had the better time pub crawling and groovin’ to the local music than any other city I have visited!

We met in an outdoor cafe on the Saturday morning I was on the way to Rosslyn Chapel.  He cheerfully noted, by the way, that I kept referring to my destination as a temple. And so I had to confess that was making the unconscious association with Solomon’s Temple and was on my way to investigating claims that it was built by Masons to replicate the interior design of the Holy of the Holies.  Would would this mean but bringing  a relic of the Sacred Marriage Rites into the Modern Age!

More on that later.  But first, Alan jumped right into the stream of the Black Madonna lore, proving that it is NOT underground in these parts.  He insisted that I immediately go out and purchase The Prime of Miss  Jean Brodie and then told me the short story that its author, Muriel Spark, wrote with the improbable title — Black Madonna!  In this manner, Alan lifted the veil that his adopted city dangles before tourists, scoffing at Secret Societies with a playful glint in his eye as ‘schoolboy antics!”  Could there be any other association but location for the Scottish invention of golf, which means, I just learned the night before: “Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden!”  A redundant title if there ever was one!

But Alan is best in his own words.  He handed me an essay that was so apt for BlackMadonna2009, that I asked him if I could publish it.  We need no better invitation to cross the illustrious yet somehow wicked gates of Edinburgh!

And it is, introduced by Alan himself:

Sugar and Spice?  One of each thanks.  The pendulum has swung from Lady to Ladette (and kept going) AND it ain’t just handbags at dawn!  Solicitor-Advocate and legal commentator, Alan Muir, risks the slings and arrows, or should that be slingbacks and GHD straighteners (?), to consider a worrying, and growing, trend.

When Rudyard Kipling penned, “The female of the species is more deadly than the male,” he was not revealing some long hidden secret nor submitting an application for the Misogynist League.

Before I go any further, please read this caveat:

I, as many know, cannot back New Labour “touchy feely” PC favoured by the “weave in your braid” brigade.  That said, I detest hypocrisy and any forms of abuse, violent or otherwise.

I have written on behalf of, and continue to support, Zero Tolerance and similar organizations, BUT, it is surely time to address one of the darker realities of modern society.  One is the misuse of “sexual equality” on a pick but don’t mix basis.

Society’s do-gooders cannot continue to proffer the argument that equality is all progress and willfully ignore the obvious.  Rates of pay advances, greater opportunity tremendous, BUT, the bad came with the good.  It was just conveniently ignored and grew like a societal cancer.

The concept of “the violent femme” is, as I have written here before, nothing new.  The days that the knife, or more recently, gun, was “only in my handbag for my boyfriend” are long gone.  Boudicca, the Amazons, etc. made way for those like Jessie Mougan (the 19th century Stockbridge baby farmer), Veverley Allett, Karen Matthews, and more recently, the two, possibly three, female sexual abusers of children, the very children left in their care.  Society, as so often, has been slow to recognize an inconvenient truth.  Those of us at the sharp end sit back bemused by the shock/horror press coverage. Frankly folks, “I was ever thus!”

Even as I write this morning, Colorado “mother” Mayumi Heene, has been shown to have been an integral part of the second form of abuse of her son.  The “baloon hoax family” have been burst, deflated and popped by a six year old child’s honesty, or by his failure to stick to the script.  Second — you cry?? Any parent who names a wean Falcon has set in motion a path to County lockup, frequent visits to A&E or childhood celebrity — i.e. the room in “we’ll sort it out for you (at a price!) Rehab and Retreat is already reserved!

A good friend of mine prosecuted a murder in Aberdeen some years ago and it took days, much cajoling from those of us who had attended “normal schools” and many replays of a self-incriminatory prison “phone call tape,” for him to accept that, actually, the female accused had tortured and killed another teen female all by herself, no man involved, (then had no problem spending the poor lassie’s savings).  Evil is, my friends, to use a P.C. tern, “non-gender specific.”

Female crime and violence, often drink fueled will, as with most problems, only be made worse by those looking for a dominant male to blame or the creation of socio-friendly excuses.  Get real people, equality, even by definition, means in all things.  There are higher rates of female alcholoism these days — hardly a shock, of aggression in town centres, of girl gangs happy to inflict horrendous injuries on a poor lassie accused by the mob(ette) of “trying to steal my boyfriend.”  The two worst cases of sustained kidnap and torture of a girl I saw professionally involved that backdrop.

It is time to stop looking for excuses and to investigate, then address, the reasons.  Between 1998 and 2007, there was an 81% increase in reported female violent crime in England and Wales.  How bad does it have to get before we, as a society, wake up?

High Street scene in Edinbugh

Belfast bus stop poster

BELFAST: OCT 22-23, 2009

My visit coincided with the grand opening of the new Ulster Museum after a two year renovation.  The transformation of the 80 year old building includes a a ground floor exhibition chronicling “the troubles,” a highly significant unveiling in that it placed Northern Ireland’s polarization into a historical context in the wake of a renewed optimism for a lasting reconciliation sparked by HIllary Clinton’s recent visit.  In its breath and range of exhibitions, and successful marriage of tradition and innovation along with art/history/science, the museum is just the symbol of integration the city needs for its resurrection.

October 22, 2009: Grand Opening of the Ulster Museum

Coincidentally, the majestic Victorian City Hall had just opened a new cafe and exhibition space devoted to a photographic history of Northern Ireland and a video installation dedicated to both celebrating luminaries and chronicling the history of the “the Troubles.”

Star of David, Universal sign of Unity, embedded in the floor of Belfast City Hall

The intention was to resurrect the city by bringing its peoples together.

Zodiac inside the rotunda of the Belfast City Hall

After my tour of the City Hall, it was dusk but I was intent to enter into West Belfast after stumbling on this mural when walking from the hostel earlier in the day.

Sandy Row, Belfast

I walked through a security checkpoint and discovered a new complex with a cafe.  I was told that HBO was shooting a series there!  Here was the convergence between past and present, Belfast’s transformation.

At dusk, I wandered over the expressway bridge into West Belfast.  What a shift of energy!  The atmosphere of the forlorn in decayed storefronts and empty streets…

West Belfast street

…the twinge of fear in knowing I was a stranger who didn’t belong there.

A group of boys playing ball and asking: “What are you doing here?”

The creepy feeling of being of being watched so close to All Hallows Eve!

Security cameras are everywhere in West Belfast, accompanied by ominous signs

West Belfast mural across from surveillance camera

Is there an environment more watched by Big Brother than West Belftast?

I doubt it.

But I was intent on seeing the wall murals which were the silent voice of the people…

After I located this one (left), just off a well traveled street, I asked a man on the street where to find more murals and he directed me to Clonard Martyrs Memorial Garden.

So, I walked through empty lanes with the attached brick houses so identified with Western Belfast, the houses of the oppressed workers who built the city…

Gate at Clonard Martyrs Memorial Garden, Western Belfast

There was a very solemn feeling, yet entering the phoenix gate of the site whose wings were separated by the opening, infused the visitor with the hope of fusion upon closing.

I sat and stared at the plaque (below)…

and monument (right) commemorating the freedom fighters.

…for a long while as dusk became night.

I returned across the bridge under the rising Crescent Moon, I came upon the symbol of Justice, also the Libra symbol of balance and peace.  How fabulous to encounter Lady Justice with a branch (the yod) just at the shift of Saturn entering the sign of Libra, in which it is exalted.

Justice mural on street adjacent to the entrance of Western Belfast

A very hopeful sign for the future!!

William Forsythe's "Decreation" at BAM

Like the Ouroboros, I have now come full circle.

No other visible artist on the planet, it seems, has insight into Kundalini like William Forsythe.

http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=1257

I can still recall the excitement I felt in my body, the Kundalini surging, when I first saw the Frankfurt Ballet in Los Angeles in 1992.   There was a ticker tape machine on stage and the dancers were reading out messages and they were all about time.

He detected it: the crucial importance of art evoking its time.  Time as the last remaining 20th century challenge for physics. Science failing to explain how — when we have so many time saving devices — we are losing time.

This past week, I spent far more time than usual in the unconscious.  On Thursday, for example, I felt myself levitating from the bed and finally got up  to discover the morning had disappeared.  I went for breakfast at 2 PM, when the Lakeside Diner was getting ready to close and sat there until they mopped under my feet, completely focused on organizing images for my oral presentation scheduled for the AICA 2009 Congress in Dublin.  My awareness of Time factored right into it!

It sounds like an old cliche, I know, to say how crucial a moment of time is because it will never happen again, but given the perspective of astrology we can scientifically calculate just HOW unique it is!

My goal as a critic is to evoke in my writing the patterns existing at the very time of its execution. To be successful at such a co-creation with the universe, I need to focus on artists who create works evoking their times.

Can my ambition explain why great human beings such as Fuller were out of context with their times?  If Time dominates human thought, than how could Margaret’s critics appreciate her being an instrument of her time?  In living in the same time as her, they couldn’t detach themselves from their times in order to see, in high relief, how she evoked her time, the post-romantic era.

This is the gift that Mary of Persephone gave me when she advised me to view my own chart from the perspective of the Galactic Center, which now represents the Great Unknown.  Ever since then, I am happy to stand in the “I don’t know” and realize this is the place of great power!  Entering the place o unknowing means a surrender to the unfolding, letting the evolutionary energies work through the body, the ultimate indicator of time.

And what about the body of work.  The timing of delivery, the timing of performances, the timing even of beginning and ending my writig.  It is all about capturing the unique moment in the most appropriate expression reflecting that moment.  This is the essence of true creativity that I am understanding by reading about Margaret Fuller.  A life in co-creation with the universe.  She was 200 years ahead of her time and her time rejected her because they couldn’t understand her achievement — mastering time so to filter her times!

Below are my notes on DECREATION which attempt to explain why this performance was so evocative of our time, defined as it is by the Saturn-Uranus opposition.  The performance begins in real time and ends in mythical time.  What separates the two is Sound.

Video illuminates symbols as signs of transformation: the hand, black face and the Sphinx created through a face resting between two feet propped on the table.

Bringing the Kundalni into the body, the rejection of kundalini by the body.

The medium of dance is explicity about the body.

Dance is therefor the Kundalini’s natural medium.

A black dancer with her holistic moves represented the natural flow of the Kundalini.  Others in the company revealed the fear associated with the serpent power.  The fear of losing control.

The very word Decreation has a religious association.  If God created the world in seven days, then how long does it take to decreate the world?

To decreate the patriarchal hold on the body and create the vacancy so the Goddess can enter.  Yet, there is considerable resistance from the Ego and the result is schizophrenia, the body fighting with itself.

It was the message of the Sphinx that drove me to Brooklyn to see William Forsythe’s Decreaton.

I have never seen such a penetrating view into human emotion, the warring opposites behind schizophrenia surfacing as the heated, desperate negotiations in a relationship, with frequent lapses into lawyering, that we carry on in the name of love.

The sheer futility in speaking about LOVE when the heart is closed and the body rejects and/or distorts the serpent power that attempts to break through the blockages that maintain stagnancy.

The heart has its own intelligence.  This central organ regulates the blood flow, maintains our ALIVENESS.

How is it that we let our mind fuck it all up??

William Forsythe acutely understands duality and the need to reconcile the warring opposites.  All the talk of love, he shows us on stage, is representative of a culture that resorts to words as a cover for the utter lack of unifying feeling.

Words as blades thrust at such an emotional pitch that the spontaneously transform into opera.

Yet, through a communal sound there is unity.  Sound creates the sacred geometry of the circle, a geometry of holism, which dominates the close of the performance.

That is the transformation.

Sound and Silence.

Decreation ends on a hopeful beautiful note, the passage into unity, the round table and the two female dancers, one wearing black and the other white, embracing.  it is reminiscent of the yin and yang.  With the rest of hte company sitting at the 12 chairs.  Twelve being a number of sacred geometry: twelve were the tribes of Israel; twelve gates to the holy city; twelve houses of the zodiac.

Sacred Geometry of the Hieros Gamos on stage.

Where Forsythe goes, others will follow.

This circle completed with William Forsythe is all about Time.  The Ouroboros devouring itself.  My work of self-devouring completed JUST IN TIME.

When science accepts astrology, which is the oldest science of all, we will have resolved the problem with Time.  And from there, scientific experiments with astrology will reveal a truth known by shamans: the gods we project onto space are actually within.

This leap in human evolution will be undeniable with 2012.  Who can deny the convergence of time and space when we have the collective experience of the Winter Solstice Sun aligning with the Galactic Center?

The question that lingered all this week after seeing Decreation is this: how much do things have to deconstruct in order for us to embrace the truth of our interconnectedness with the Earth and its place in the divine rhythm of the cosmos?  Wouldn’t it be best to have all the warring parts of ourselves take their places around the round table representing the unity we can discover by understanding our inner rhythms influenced by the galactic bodies?  Isn’t it time to prove Newton wrong and reveal scientifically that the planets are not just dead objects in space, and alive as our own bodies, charged by the cosmic rhythms!

from "Shadow Play" by Debra Drexler

From my catalogue essay on Debra Drexler’s Shadow Play:

“The painter layers spontaneous imagery from the collective unconsciousness and solidifies forms in accordance with universal symbolism – tree, bird and shadow.  In doing so, she reveals how, in a time of uncertainty, the only authentic path is for the artist is to embrace Uncertainty, and ride the Quantum Wave as it collapses to uncover the emerging archetype of the Self.  “If humanity is going to survive and achieve its potential, an evolution in consciousness needs to take place.”

The riddle of the Sphinx arises again with the synchronicity of discussing Debra Dreler’s luminous “As above, so below” manifestation of the spirit of the Yod in full Aquarian splendor.

This unfolding is a response to  Jason’s invitation to the answer the riddle of his Black Sphinx which he placed on  pedestal over a closed door with a large keyhole.

Jason Tallon and his "Black Sphinx"

I was too busy processing the synchronicity that led me to his studio to find his Sphinx when I was resurrecting the Great Sphinx in my fiction, in a manuscript entitled The Sacred Chamber which explored the notion of ancient scrolls containing the root of our human origins located under the paws of the Great Sphinx.

Yesterday, the Sphinx came up again.

Card #33 The Secret Dakini Oracle

I opened the book of The Secret Dikini Oracle (the tarot deck I use for divination) to card 33, Eternal Life, which contains an image of the Egyptian god Amen before the primordial waters turned golden by the sun.  He is holding an Ankh as if a mirror to the sun and below is the Great Sphinx.

The text reads:  “The Sphinx is the symbol of the alchemical agent or catalyst, whose inner nature holds the key to the promise of transformation, producing the substance that can turn all matter to gold, all spirits to the Enlightened.  The raw matter is the person, the distilled elixir is the Immortal Spirit of Eternity.”

The divinatory meaning of this card: “a solution to a problem, the triumph of light over darkness, clarity over obscurity, just as the sun rises each morning and after the night is completed.”

Hurrah!.  The answer to the riddle is right there for anyone who can open up to the awe of a majestic work of art.   Creating something that outlives one’s lifetime, that exists in eternal splendor for the ages to enjoy, investigate and reinterpret in accordance with their cosmic influences.  All along, Jason was the key to the riddle when he repeated to me his childhood desire: “I want to be immortal!”

So here, Mercury’s six-week journey comes to a conclusion. It moves out of its Shadow under the Virgo Moon on Wednesday. I will be meeting with Diane Bowen and bringing my two-year journey of inquiry over the state of the feminine in art and the popular culture to a close.

The night before, I concluded my public dialogue with Debra Drexler (at left, siting in the audience before the d gallery discussion) who transits between Hawaii and New York delivering a view of the Sky Goddess landing in the material of art.

Being fully engaged in the present moment is the underlying message here.  Living in full awareness of the present moment because every moment has a unique quality that will never occur again.  How we astrologers know this!

Egyptian Goddess

We concluded our dialogue with a visit to a party where I met an Egyptian woman who stands (left) as a living reminder that the Goddess (Uranus in Pisces)  has landed in the body (Saturn).  If I am frustrated in my current feeling that the art world has fallen behind in excluding the Goddess, then this was a crucial sign that she has entered the multicultural scene of New York City!

How does she make her Grand Entranc?.  The clue, for those who are present, is in Debra’s painting below.

from "Shadow Play" by Debra Drexler

So, the key unlocking the door guarded by the Black Sphinx (the symbol that guided this time of the Nigredo ruling the underground EMERGENCE)  is being full present to the unfolding of the Cosmos.  As much as I attempt to consciously put this into daily practice, I need to be reminded.

Stopping Time Meditation October 2 at 8:40 PM

On Friday night, October 2, I attended an 8 PM meditation led by Mary of Persephone and the clock stopped at 8:40.  Mary of Persephone always guides us into meditation by songs and the song she played for us was all about time and being present and the arrogance of ego that, in retrospect, believes it would have known what to do at precipitous moments in history and God informing the ego that it wouldn’t have known anything.

It was a difficult message to absorb, made more difficult by the clock stopping, something that Mary of Persephone noted and included into the process.  As we discussed the synchronicity afterwards, the clock started again.

Time vs. Eternity.  This crucial teaching took place between the Moon conjunct Uranus and the Moon conjunct Saturn.  Uranus drives one to create for eternity and Saturn is the pressure of time. The meditation seemed to go so slowly because the rising sign was Taurus and the group/ creative experience of time and consciousness was reinforced by the Saturn in Fifth House opposing  the Moon/Uranus in the Eleventh House of groups and the collective consciousness.

One of the feelings that came up for me during the  seemingly endless meditation was: “Do I really have time for this?” And after the group experience came to an end, the answer was surely: YES!