MUMMIES

  Not sure how to take this fact… the ancient Egyptians venerated their cats so much they mummified them. It was a capital crime to kill a cat on the streets of Thebes. Cats were sacred. I own three cats so I guess I am guilty of participating in Bastet’s ancient cat cult….. & then there is the mummies. Something ludicrous & creepy & truly funny about these artifacts. If I were a cartoonist I would love the form these cat mummies take. Check out their faces. Sometimes I have to pinch myself. Reality is more dreamlike than I ever imagined… who would of thunk….. cat mummies… what next?

SPHINX REDUX

I may not know much at all about anything but I do know that a great mystery abides in the origins of our civilization. As we approach the end of modern times it behooves us to look back into  where we came from. Like me, I am sure you look with perplexity on the culture that lived on the Nile in the days before Moses. Who were those people? Were they us? The statue of the Sphinx on the Plateau at Giza is tens of thousand years old… likely older than the empires of  recorded ancient Egypt. The more I know the less I understand. We seem to have amnesia for where we came from & who we are. I am willing to say I just do not know. However… there are tantalizing clues everywhere. The answer is staring us in the face. The riddle of the sphinx is simply that question…. “Who are you … do you know who you are?”

SPHINX

I conceived of this painting as a schematic for the design of the Sphinx. The sphinx cat is a bizarre creature. I know. I live with one. Imagine if the Creator was Rube Goldberg or a committee of whimsical inventors. Project 6784ab34: “Create the design for a feline”. I imagine this painting as the blue print for such a design. Lines scribbled up & down… round and round. Until by accident a semi gargoyle ugly duckling creature of mystery appears from the cross hatches. Not sure I understand the connection with the lion woman statue in ancient Egypt except that both are beguiling & mysterious. If you could create a cat out of doodles you would have my cat Nefertiti. Oh yeah… I named my Sphinx Nefertiti to add compliment to injury.

ORIGINAL SIN

The definition of sin is the state of not being true to who we truly are. In the creation story the fruit offered & accepted was no more & no less than the awareness of our true nature. The irony is profound. In becoming aware of our solitary state we separate ourselves immediately from the oceanic entirety of the Source. Living in the Garden is that state of being blissfully oblivious… “comfortably numb” as my favourite band from the seventies sang. Our origin as spiritual beings came from the separation. It is the original sin because we are no longer completely true to what we once we were. It is in the growing awareness… the clarity that accepting that temptation opens for us that we begin to move forward spiritually as both divine & human beings. The fruit is offered. I accept.

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TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

Wisdom is not discovery…. wisdom is recollection. We remember with clarity what we have always known. The fruit of the tree of knowledge in the old, old story is handed to us over & over again.  The innocence lost is simply the final completion of knowing what it is to be human… to be completely aware in a body that must perish. The tree rooted in the earth reaching skyward places us exactly where we are in the space-time continuum. The self-same tree embodies the suffering we endure… the suffering that opens our eyes… that makes us remember who we really are. Therein lies a mystery… to eat of the fruit… to know who I am… to open the sacred scrolls… to become… to be… 

NIGHT WINGS

THE MOON AGAIN

My sister and I had a discussion about the nature of the moon & its reflection. On a still surface the moon is reflected whole like a perfect silver disk. When there are ripples,  the moon’s reflection is shattered into little shards of pure white. Those shards when collected together still make up the entirety of the moon’s reflection. The moon itself is complete as always. The nature of the Divine is like the moon & its refections. We only see the Divine through its reflections. Each & every one of us sees those  reflections from the place where we stand… from our limited perspective... whole or in slivers.  We see  the reflection not the source.  The purity of the Moon remains inviolate & perfect.