(Friday, November 4, 2016) moon: waxing crescent Capricorn / tarot: two of wands reversed
I am teaching an art class around a rectangular table. There is a craft component, much like clay sculpture: we are painting scenes on cardboard boxes. I am using a smooth, pale golden paint, with an ease of brushability similar to tempera paint. Soft and shimmery.
I run out of the paint, but find small containers of silver and gold and copper paste. At first I am disappointed, because the thickness of the paste is too difficult to spread with a brush. But I soon realize that I have the knowledge and skill set to create my own paint using the metallic pastes. I am a chemist, an alchemist.
(Sunday, October 30, 2016) new moon Scorpio / tarot Queen of Swords reversed
I look out into our backyard through the large dining room window. Animals of all kinds are lined up, single file, crossing the yard from east to west. Each species has its own line: rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, varieties of birds. Most distinctive is a straight line of red-tailed hawks. They appear in profile, like images of Horus the Egyptian falcon god. They walk with great dignity across the green field. I am so captivated by their presence that I head outside, entering the backyard from the south corner of the house in an effort to avoid disrupting them.
Lola is with me, equally intrigued, yet not in a predatory way. As I turn the south corner she transforms into a young human female. She is blond, shorter than I, and affectionately hugs my left side. The animals see us and their lines start to scatter and intermingle. They are startled but not frightened enough to begin a mass escape. The hawk line becomes disorganized but not as much as the lines of the other animals. They are at the farthest point of the yard, at the tree line near the pond. I try to count them: there are at least 30, maybe as many as 40 birds of prey.
Day notes:
We have many types of hawks visit our yard but the sighting of red-tails and eagles is fairly rare. I have been deeply saddened, terrified, to read this week that wildlife populations have dropped by 50% since 1970.
The orderly lines of animals feel mystical and beautiful to me, as though they are creating a visual treat, a work of conceptual art, for my viewing pleasure. They know I honor the shamanic and enjoy including them in my artwork.
I was tagged in a Friday Facebook post by my writer friend Jana, who now lives in L.A., in celebration of the 30th anniversary of her design business called Smart Set. A group of us who hung out and worked together there were given little titles, mine was “Paints for love, keylines for money.” A very touching remark. (Keylining is an old craft that has been replaced by digital design.) A flock of brilliant, hawk-like intellectuals started Smart Set.
Horus the Sky God was the son of Isis and Osiris, one of the first stories of immaculate conception.
Jamie Sams’ book says hawk is the messenger, bringing information from the ancestors and other realms. Pay attention. Birds of prey, birds of pray.
I have two big cat dreams last week: one of a lioness and her cub, one of a black jaguar and Lola.
(Saturday, October 29, 2016) new moon Libra (Black Moon) / tarot ten of swords
When I awoke this morning I knew I’d had a night filled with dreams, although I recalled none of them. I laid on my left side and closed my eyes, waiting to see if any memories would percolate up. The 100% full moon occurs tomorrow in Scorpio (water sign of transformation and the underworld), trine Neptune (the planet that rules dreaming), therefore powerful dreams and a “thinning of the veil” are expected by some folks, just in time for Halloween.
Three fragments bubbled up. In the first, I enter a large, square hall with a polished wooden floor. The hall is hundreds of years old, completely devoid of furnishings, and the high walls contain multiple recessed rooms, each with a bed, each hidden by elegant drapery. The Observer Me sees that I am sleeping in one of the curtained alcoves, dreaming a dream that I first consider to be precognitive. But as I enter more completely into the structure of the dream, I perceive the way we create the fabric of reality through our dreams. Dreams construct, not preview, and that is the value of lucid dreaming: bringing awareness to waking life of the architectural power of dreaming. “Precognition” is more than a vision.
In the second fragment, I am floating in a small wooden row boat in a cove surrounded by steep red boulders. Cornwall? The sea is black, the water still. A small churning begins, right below the surface, next to the left bow of my boat. An infant girl is beginning to manifest in the sea of the unconscious. She twists and turns and giggles. I dip my fingers in the water, intending to scoop her up, to save her from a potential drowning. I am not allowed to do so, for that would interfere with the completion of her manifestation. Her birth. It would prevent her from entering this world, this incarnation. At the moment of my realization, I become conscious of the teaming life beneath the midnight water. Infinite, diverse, eternal.
The third fragment takes place at my grandmother Helen’s white wooden farmhouse. It is Chris’ birthday. The house is full of celebrants. I step outside for a moment, into a gentle mist. I am completely alone; not even a single tree stands in the outer landscape.
Day notes:
Chris came home from the hospital (femur surgery #3) last night. I came home from Methodist with glitter in my eyebrows. The anniversary of my first meeting with Chris is The Day Of The Dead, November 1.
I’ve been watching “Poldark” on PBS, which takes place at the Cornish coast.
