Buddaverse Variations: In The Beginning

As I began to work on my new set of Tibetan inspired digital glitch animations ('haikus'), it seemed like a natural starting point to harken back to some of the Forest Guardian anims from last year as a starting point. Below are a couple of early Buddhaverse Variations haikus paired with examples of the Forest Guardian anim(s) that they derived from.

haiku 2

haiku 6

Forest Gods 11

haiku 18

Forest Gods 12

Forest Protectors Revealed

After completing the panoramic "Hidden Nature" series, I continued to wonder about the issue of invisibility/hiding and exactly how far I had taken that - such that the figures perhaps have become a too-faint hallucination against the jungle foliage pattern. Had the background itself became the subjective foreground overwhelming a viewer's ability to decipher / discover the (intentionally concealed) subjects?

I set out to make work that in some ways was a visual simplification of "Hidden Nature." In these new pieces, the Forest Protectors would be less concealed, faces revealed within the chaotic canopy leaves and branches.

Forest Spirits 01

Forest Spirits 02

Forest Spirits 03

Forest Spirits 04

Follow-on note: for the Upstream Gallery's "Small Works 2020" show in January, I had these images output onto a metallic white paper, creating quite a nice optical depth.

Forest Protectors Embodied

I liked the faces of the Forest Spirit protectors emerging through the leaf canopy of the forest. I started to think about how in reality, the leaves and branches would be swaying or shuffling in the wind, constantly changing the appearance and visibility of the Forest Protectors. With an eye towards earlier forest Goddess animations, I played around with similar a layered approach, with the addition of sound, to build new animations (saved as short .mp4 videos). Here is a sample of a few:

Note that the SW tools I use included IOS apps including D'efect, GlitchArt, and Hyperspektiv. Final layering and sequencing is done in PS on my Mac.

Triptychs!!!

I was rummaging around some work from a few years ago and decided that I wanted to see if it might be interesting to combine a few pieces into triptychs panels. Below are 2 of the resulting compositions. What do you think? The results are surprisingly powerful! Definitely something to explore more...

Durga Altar Triptych ©2012

Lady One Death Yantra Triptych ©2012

CIrcle of Spirits

I just completed a new piece based upon journey imagery that I received a week ago. The work combines three sources of guidance from three different realms - the sky world, the tree world, and the ocean world.

CIrcle of the Spirits

In the nighttime sky, the Pleiades star cluster is overlaid with a constellation of an owl carrying a rattlesnake in its beak. (The rattle is the Mayan symbol of the Pleiades). The ocean quadrant is populated by whale and dolphins singing song lines of the deep (deep ocean, deep time). The forest quadrant presents a cathedral of redwood trees, the spirits of which are gathering in a ritual circle (called forth by Lady One Death, the great dark spirit of nature).

Spirits of the Redwood Forest

Redwood Spirit Circle ©2012

I just completed this image based upon a journey that I undertook a few months back. During the session, I found myself in a deep redwood forest with sunlight filtering in long beams down to the soft, damp, needle-covered ground. The scent of the redwoods filled the air.

I was wondering about this location - was I understanding it correctly or not? How did I come to be here? How did this connect with my original journey intent querying about running for public office?

Slowly I realized that I was not alone, but surrounded by tall, elongated translucent white figures shimmering in the sparkling light of the woods. I immediately understood them to be the Spirits of the Redwood trees themselves. I queried them as to their purpose coming to me. One replied that they came to call me into their circle and to offer me their strength and courage from their perspective of a thousand years of watching the world go by. "Stand tall. Be strong and courageous as we are. We will be with you." I felt honored by their presence and their support.

A Murder of Crow

This weekend has been an "in your face" one in terms of signs and omens - crows showing up everywhere... I can't shake thinking about a "Murder of Crows" - "murder" being the medieval counting noun for a group of crows (a "flock" of crows being improper terminology). I wonder where that came from? From seeing a clutch of crows picking greedily away at carcasses of dead animals? From the cacophony of cawing coming from a bunch of crows hanging out together in some tall tree canopy?

The first crow made its presence unavoidable, insistent. There on the fence staring straight at me as I drove out of the supermarket parking lot. I thought of the Massive Attack song "Safe From Harm" whose lyrics seemed to capture the moment precisely: I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me to see me looking back at you.

The second occurrence today was equally notable. I was standing in the warm afternoon light when first one crow, then another, made their way noisily over my head and took perch high above in the almost bare fall branches of a large oak tree. Within moments a third crow came to perch and together they merrily squawked loudly back and forth. I got a strange sense that they had come to get my attention - and grab it they did - especially when the fourth crow showed up! Only this one was huge, twice as big as the others. One of the biggest crows I've ever seen.

So now I am left pondering what appears to be a clear message from my ancestor Shamanic spirits. "Wake up and pay attention!"? "We are watching over you!"?? or perhaps "Hey, what's up. Haven't heard from you in a while. We need to talk!"???

Mount Shasta with Spirit Guardian

Wheel of Life - Bhutan Dreaming

The design is based upon the Wheel of Life thangka format. Many of the source images are from Bhutan. It is a commission for a teaching image - didactic in intent - concerning sustainable living. The assignment was to put such "modern" information into a framework (design) that would be easily recognized and read by a typical Bhutanese viewer.

The parts of the Wheel are are follows:

The inner circle shows the cock, the snake and the wild boar symbols - symbols of lust, bodily needs, ego. The inner ring shows "good karma" and "bad karma" effects - with the good karma leading to eventual Buddhahood.

The middle ring (consisting of 6 large slices) traditionally shows scenes for the 6 realms. In this case, I have shown realms relating to ecological living: green sustainability vs. out-of-control development & resulting pollution. Starting at the top running counter clockwise: a view of Bhutan today with mountains and lake; the landscape with sustainable energy (windmills and solar arrays); a waterfall and pristine glacial river with prayer flags; mountain poppies in a meadow; a view of lake/river pollution and uncontrolled discharge; a view of air pollution from factories and burning forests.

Around the Wheel's outer ring is Yama - Lord of Death / Karma.

I also placed some local fauna (birds and leopard) around the outside along with a traditional offering symbol.

So, this is my first attempt at creating a didactic visual that can be used to tell a specific story (contrasting two possible approaches / outcomes -> sustainable vs. current madness). Which path will Bhutan take into their future?

They talk of GNH - Gross National Happiness, so I imagine they will maintain the beauty of their land and the stewardship of it by continuing in a sustainable approach to living.

Jewel Tree Visualizations

New work for the New Year - a series based upon the Jewel Tree visualization practice outlined in "The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism" by Robert Thurman.

Bodhisattva Jewel Tree

Tara Jewel Tree

Kalachakra Jewel Tree

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If you are interested in the book "The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism" by Robert Thurman - which I highly recommend, here is a link to it on Amazon.

Grandmother Earth Machu Picchu

In his book "Island of the Sun: Mastering the Inca Medicine Wheel", Alberto Villoldo recounts his trance/dream experience of the great Grandmother Apu of Machu Picchu. In this meeting, she taught him how to project his consciousness to merge with that of the condor, to fly high into the sky on the winds of this sacred bird.

Read more of this article posted at ShamanDreaming.org.

Ecstatic Body Postures - 2009

This posting will be updated monthly to present posture journeys based upon this year's new moon cycles. For more information about Ecstatic Body Postures, read my previous postings (below) and visit the Cuyamungue Institute. If you are in the New York metropolitan area, contact me and I will ask Marianne Carroll, our local group leader, to contact you with details about the next (monthly) circle.

Mayan Whistle Pose

02.24.09 - Pisces New Moon. Mayan Whistle Pose - This is a "living myth" posture - related to the Hero Twins of the Mayan creation story, The Popol Vuh. For this posture, I created a wide golden necklace matching that found on the original sculptural figure. The ceremonial collar is covered in hermetic hieroglyphs, with specific translations as indicated (see collar detail below).

The trance image is a composite of a number of trance experience as reported by the participants: at the bottom right of image is the rattle with "incense" (spirit smoke) coming off of it, producing the vision space of the ancestors (upper panel). We see a circle of 3 ancestors joined together in a ceremonial circle, each of them in the journey pose, and each wearing the golden collar covered in mystic hieroglyphs. Behind them / emerging from their circle is a pillar of fire and water. Within this portal / vortex can be sensed images of attending spirit animals - protectors and guides. We can see a pair of guardian wolves at the top of the image emerging from the smoke, further down in the mid-section, a pair of totem ravens. Thru the fire and smoke rises the (kundalini energy) snake of transformation. Finally, in the bottom left appears a white cave bear appears to ensure the ceremony results in healing for all.

Mayan Ceremonial Trance Collar

Feathered Serpent Pose

01.26.09 - Aquarius New Moon. This is a time of rapid portal openings and energy shifts: a solar eclipse falls on this new moon, followed 2 weeks later by a lunar eclipse on the full moon gateway. Meanwhile, Venus (in the evening) and Saturn (in the pre-dawn) play in the vicinity of the moon over the coming month... The posture figure is The Feathered Serpent, circa 6000BC-2500BC, found in areas as diverse as Bosnia, Siberia, Peru and India. The pose is classified as a Spirit Journey / Initiation pose.

Here is part of my journey notes:

I am in a desert landscape under a central tree - acacia. In the darkness around me I sense, then clearly see, a large number of animal totem spirits circling and dancing... As it becomes daylight, the spirit animals auras become indistinct, almost imperceptible. Yet I can sense them still dancing and cavorting around me in the landscape. The shadows cast by the tree leaves catch my eye - I see refractions of a full eclipse - a myriad of solar "beads" which glint and shine in synchronicity with the sun and moon conjunction in the sky above.

A hummingbird flies up to my ear and whispers "Let go, let it fall away. This is the time of transformation, of falling away, of stripping away the illusion - to reveal something new and unexpected under the old skin. A new world, a new world tree. Let the old tree come crashing down... let the old skin fall away. Do not fear. Help others around you through their fear of what seems chaotic, out-of-control."

The solar shadow play mentioned above is a real physical effect that I've had the pleasure to witness several times in "waking reality" - it occurs because the tree crown's leaf crossings randomly create a thousand "pin hole" camera-like apertures which transmit silhouettes of the solar eclipse, projecting a myriad of sharp, glittering eclipse images onto the ground below in the tree's shadow. The effect is strongest near totality.