The Awakening Introduction

I saw a small stone bridge crossing over a pool of water in the forest; The Awakening came to me - very nearly complete - in a sudden flash of inspiration. My initial inspirations are not always detailed: The Return first came to me as nothing more than twelve dim lights surrounding a bright thirteenth in the center. But this time it was all there: the Gates of Eternity through which shines the sun, and the Goddess of Spring/Dawn walking across the water as the cold and darkness recede from Her.

Mythologically speaking, Spring and Dawn are equivalent: both are that part of the Wheel of Time which ends the period of sleep and heralds the transformation and renewal of the world. I immediately recognized this component in my vision, but I saw other things too - in unusually specific detail. She wore a swirling gown with a strange sloped neckline, held an auto-luminous blossom to Her breast, and with Her other hand made the "boon-bestowing"gesture (familiar in Buddhist iconography and in my work). And trailing from Her boon-bestowing hand was...rose petals?

I have come to trust these visions - even when I don't know what they are meant to represent; I know at least part of their meaning will become clear in the fullness of time. And so I made a few preparatory sketches of my vision, and then moved on to other projects. Months passed, and a beautiful day found me and my sweet Elisabeth spending the day in Waterton National Park. We were wandering through the forest looking for a nice place to have a picnic, when we came into a clearing that looked ideal. Elisabeth moved into the sunlight and, suddenly, hundreds of little butterflies rushed up around her from their hiding place in the tall grass.

My mind had been on more recreational matters, but when I saw those fluttering specks of glowing color, my vision came back with renewed vigor: they were not rose petals at all, they were butterflies - archetypal symbols of transformation - swirling around the Goddess in a Great Helix. Even the Gown made sense: the sloping neckline and swirling gown were visual reinforcements of the spiral aspect of the Goddess which motivates and generates the Spiral of Life and Regeneration.

It wasn't that I found a better visual solution that I preferred: I had a spontaneous vision, and I saw it wrong. Only with a subsequent vision, of the same thing, was I able to correct my earlier misinterpretation. But how can something that doesn't yet exist be seen wrong? This seems to suggest a pre-existing and external reality to this image. I had spiral design elements in the composition before I consciously knew that there was to be a helix of butterflies. I also had several "Seven-fold" elements before I knew any history of its relation to the spiral, or of its intimate connection to DNA. How could I know what I did not yet know? If this were a randomly generated hallucination, an artifact of my imagination and nothing more, how could it possess a counterpart (of which I was not yet cognizant) in both the tangible world of microbiology and the intangible world of mathematics and geometry?

And then there's that chthonic ouroboros in the ice at the bottom. I drew and painted only an arm of ice receding away from the advancing figure, intending the shape to echo the helix shape I had established with the butterflies. I even included a little whole in the ice, to break up the monotony of the surface texture. About 14 weeks passed between the time I drew the ice on the blank linen, and the time I painted it. It was only at the end of the day when I painted the ice, when I was leaning back to scrutinize my efforts that I saw it: the serpent, jaws open as if in the act of consumption. You have no reason to believe me - I can offer no evidence - but I know I did not put that serpent there.

I believe that a transpersonal part of me (which is a transpersonal part of all of us) knew what to do where I did not: some part of that paleolithic hunter-shaman still wanders restlessly in the ancient caves of the human unconscious. How such a thing can be, no one knows; by what mechanism such knowledge is transmitted, no one can say...

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Gravity is one of four - and only four - fundamental forces of the universe: the strong nuclear force, which binds the atom together; the weak nuclear force, which facilitates the radioactive decay of isotopal elements into other elements; the electro-magnetic force, which facilitates molecular structure and generates light (and represents 100% of our perceptions of the cosmos: photonic radiation like heat and light, vibration of molecules like sound, chemical structure like smell and taste, sensation - that pressure under your feet is not gravity you feel, but rather the electro-magnetic repulsion of the earth against you body); and gravity, which is a function of mass - right down to the infinitesimal electron - and is responsible for the large-scale structure of the cosmos. Gravity holds stellar bodies - asteroids, worlds, stars, galaxies - in the same familiar cyclical rhythm we find in the tides.

Einstein is regarded as one of the true immortals of science, along with Galileo and Newton - two scientists whose primary contribution to the world was also a revolutionary observation about the mystery of Gravity. Einstein's realization - first described in a 1915 paper and termed "general relativity" - was that space itself is distended by Gravity. Imagine a perfect 2-D plane - it has width and length but no depth. Up and down do not exist. Now imagine that this perfect plane possesses a rubber-like elastic quality, and place a massive object - a baseball, for instance - upon the plane. What happens? The baseball causes an up and down distention in the plane into 3-D space. Plane beings on this plane would be oblivious to this distention however, because for them up and down do not exist. They might observe some curious features of their 2-D planar universe, but the true nature of their 2-D planar space would remain unknown until their 2-D Einstein arrived to describe it in an equally mysterious language known as "field equations."

It is the same in our 3-D voluminar universe: massive objects cause a distention in 3-D space into 4-D hyperspace. And like the 2-D beings who cannot see up and down, we 3-D beings cannot perceive hyper-up and hyper-down. Where is Gravity then?

Eternal and absolute. Silent and still. Gravity - that perfect force which holds the universe itself together - originates from a place not in this universe. And all massive objects in the cosmos are drawn in Her direction, drawn to the One who waits, drawn to the One who receives...

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When the rays of enlightenment first fell upon ancient Greece - the foundation of western civilization - a path was shown from the shadows of ignorance and superstition. But those shadows returned to eclipse that fragile light, leaving only a hidden legacy of knowledge. Europe slept for nearly one thousand years before this classical treasure was rediscovered.

In the ages that followed the medieval era of shadows - Renaissance, Reformation, and the Age of Reason (or Enlightenment) - these ancient descriptions of science and philosophy slowly evolved into an idea more powerful than monarchs or nations: modern liberalism.

In three paroxysms of reform, the social revolutions in Britain, France, and America (symbolized here by the red, blue, and white gown - echoing the flags of these three nations), released liberty (the dove) into the light. And yet, even though this liberty has given the West unprecedented freedom and prosperity, our enlightenment remains incomplete. We yet long for the wisdom that so inscrutably escapes us, and are neither satisfied nor content.

Why not? As the enlightenment continues to drive society's evolution, we grow increasingly overwhelmed by the bewildering complexities of a perpetually changing world. 20th century modernism has created a society that depends for its existence upon hyper-accelerated growth and development. But perhaps we sometimes seek the comfort of things known and familiar, like the woman (a manifestation, or angel, of civilization) who is leaning to the right upon the edifice of history. Even while she reaches for the liberalizing light of the left, she rests upon conservative tradition and the past.

This painting depicts the human quest for wisdom. It seems that whether we design our social and political structures to the ethereal left or the material right makes no difference. Societies can be dynamic, constantly redefining themselves in the pursuit of some idealistically defined objective; or static, relying on the precedence of history. Either way, people don't change much: we feel joy and misery, hope and despair, just as people did 500 or 5000 years ago. It is, apparently, easier to reinvent society, than ourselves.

Until individuals, and not just the society around them, change in some fundamental way, the realization of our aspirations will never be found in this or that administrative mechanism. We shall always be in partial darkness, and lost in our own ignorance (the mist), until we abandon the comfortable security of invariance, and venture alone through the shadowy labyrinth of the unknown (the forest - a symbol of the unconscious mind, and the unrealized wisdom hidden away therein). Complete enlightenment is not found left or right, but at a distant place, through and beyond the wilderness.

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The entire sum of heavy elements in all the cosmos is the product of the deaths of stars. The mountains, oceans, forests, you and I, and the earth beneath us, are all made of the same celestial ash. By what magic does this ash reconfigure itself into such wondrous things? What sorcery manipulates this electrochemical bonding that results in literally infinite diversity? From whence came and where resides the instructions that allow carbon to perform its stupefyingly complex interactions? Most of us can only look up at the sky and wonder.

The ancient egyptians, who had an intuitive sense of the cosmological, imagined a creator god from which came the earth and sky. The heavens above, the ethereal womb of creation, is pictured as feminine. The earth below, physical and reaching up to embrace the sky, is pictured as masculine. In their mythology, Geb the earth, and Nut the sky, briefly unite before they are forever divided by the air god, Shu. One of the children of this divine union was the goddess Isis, who, among other tasks, was responsible for life. Even 5000 years ago, egyptian clerics had at least a vague notion that Life - the progeny of Earth and Sky - was the magic that happens when the ethereal and the material join together.

In the modern era, we understand that the earth, rotating on its axis, revolves around the sun in an ellipse. Because these factors change the conditions on earth each 1/4 cycle, creating four distinct periods of weather within a year, we have chosen to artificially divide the sky into four equal parts. We call these divisions in the sky Seasons.

In this painting I have chosen to represent only 2 seasons because that is as much of the sky as we can see at one time here on earth. Winter follows Autumn as the sky benevolently caresses the earth on its lonely journey through space. I have alluded to the presence of Spring, beyond the domain of Winter, by the use of dawn colours upon the distant clouds. Summer exists in front of the extreme foreground, where the bull elk looks to approaching Autumn, the time of the ritual that perpetuates life on this planet. And everywhere, the earth (the symbolic husband), and life (the symbolic child), reach up with the eternal desire to embrace the maternal sky.

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I call these mythological beings Zoanthropia Musaicum (Latin for animal/human mosaic). They are symbolic of the relationship between ourselves and the rest of the natural world; a future cultural and biological integration with the symphony of nature, and a more intimate understanding of the destiny of life and consciousness in the cosmos.

Sometimes when walking through the forest, I can scarcely make any progress, for fear of missing some tiny and fragile treasure hidden within the foliate labyrinth. As little rays of beckoning sunlight flash through the verdant spires of the sacred forest cathedral, it almost seems as though I can here the windy voices of the transcendent choir permeating that holy place with song. And whether the angels of nature and their divine choral symphony transform the forest, or the way I perceive it, I cannot say. Who is it that sings with such transcendent and irresistible beauty, inviting me into discovery?

The ancient Greeks believed that all ideas were created by gods. When moved by sympathy for humanity, they would bestow upon a meritorious individual a precious gift of divine knowledge, delivered on the wings of a divine messenger. One of nine muses would fly down to earth and silently whisper a little bundle of wisdom directly into the mind of the beneficiary. She would leave no trace of her presence, except the vaguely unsettling feeling that the new idea in one's mind was discovered, and not invented - almost as if it was somewhere outside, unknown until happened upon.

But why nine muses? Well, the root of 9 is 3 (3 X 3 = 9). That is, the root - that which connects the living to the source of nourishment (physical food, or spiritual wisdom) - of the nine muses is 3: the Holy Trinity. But what is the Holy Trinity? In many different places in the world, there are different representations of the Trinity. In Hindu belief, there is Brahma - the creator, Vishnu - the preserver, and Shiva - the destroyer. This is just one example of many.

Of course, the Trinity with which we in the west are most familiar is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The bible describes Christ and the Holy spirit as God's right and left hands. The symbolic reading of these words refers to a God with two complimentary natures: an objective, and a subjective. Christ is the physical manifestation of God, objective, and representative of the conscious rational mind. The Holy Spirit is the ethereal will of God, and representative of the unconscious intuitive mind. And in the center is the third aspect of God, the union of the other two, and yet transcendant to either of them. This is the meaning of the Holy Trinity, and the nine muses are symbolic of the connection between us, and the divine fire that sustains the cosmos.

The Trinity is also here in this image: the objective aspect is portrayed as feminine - the hummingbirds; the subjective aspect is portrayed as masculine - the phallus-like crimson columbines. And Nature is the unity of the two, wherein masculine and feminine are merely component parts - halves that are compelled to merge into the singular divinity that is the center and circumference of existence.

And so, like many people who walk through the forest, I feel like I have made a connection to something larger, beyond comprehension. Perhaps those little muses have whispered something in my ear...

In the beginning, all was darkness in Nin, the primordial ocean of chaos. And then came a great fire in the heavens and his name was Ra. He created Shu (the air), and Tefnut (the moisture); they in turn created heaven and earth. Nut, Goddess of the sky, and Geb, God of the earth, were filled with desire for each other, knowing that with the union of the ethereal womb of the heavens and the material seed of the earth, all things might be possible. Ra, master of the cosmos, was envious of the potential they possessed, and forbade the union. But with courageous disobedience they soon came together and knew a brief but passionate embrace. When Ra learned of their defiance, a consuming rage came upon him, and he ordered Shu to eternally divide them. To this day, the lonely earth reaches up in arousal, seeking to hold his beloved sky once more.

Ra was to slow, however, and their brief union was fruitful: Nut gave birth to four children - brothers Osirus and Seth, and sisters Isis and Nephthys - who became the four cardinal deities of the earth and lords over all therein. Of these four, Isis - Goddess of life - was supreme.

Isis is the Mistress of the Four Elements (terrestrial earth and water, and celestial wind and fire - symbols of the both the divided functions of body and spirit and the rational and creative aspects of the mind). As the embodiment of all the forces of nature, She is the Mother of all life. It is Her Elemental Will that forges the transcendent, static, ethereal, (the sky) with the immanent, dynamic, material, (the earth) into the unitary miracle of living things.

Isis, the great Mother Goddess, exists at the center of all life. She draws the earth upward, that Her blood might flow down to nourish the four corners of the world. And the seeds of the earth are born upon Her breath, that they might find a home in the desert, and thereby bring the fiery spark of new life to that once desolate place. The oasis in the desert, like life in the cosmos, is a miraculous little jewel, improbable almost to the point of impossible. Only the fourfold energies of Isis that penetrate space and time to intersect at this place, bring forth Life.

Isis holds next to Her breast the Egyptian symbol known as ankh. It literally translates as life or vitality, but it is also a pictograph of man (head, arms and body). This is the image of mother and child. Like all mothers, she struggles to protect Her children - and cannot. As children grow and wander far from their mother's gentle protection, they must eventually suffer. And like all mothers, Isis suffers the pain of Her children, and suffers in Her helplessness to prevent it.

But the passive, nurturing Beauty of the Goddess is a component of the life force the She provides to sustain us. To be sensitive to the energies of nature, is to be attuned to the Goddess and Her transcendent nourishment that informs the needs of both body and spirit. Between the passive and active extremes of the living experience, is the center wherein one makes contact with the Goddess, and is replenished and sustained by Her life-giving benevolence.

It is a central role of the feminine archetype - the Great Mother Goddess - to bring one into this center, where the transformation occurs. The ancient Egyptians tell a story of a spiritual coupling, between Isis and the dead body of Osirus (once leader of the terrestrial Gods, but killed by his brother Seth). From this union came Horus - the living God and supreme Lord of the cosmos. This story appears many, many times across the earth, and across history. Our stories about Gods, are stories about ourselves. And our desire for the miracle benediction of the Goddess, is pervasive indeed: from Cybele (the most ancient deity we know of - who later becomes Ishtar in Persia, Isis in Egypt, Artemis in Greece, and Diana in Rome), to Devaki (the human mother of Krishna - God incarnate on earth),to Queen Maya (virgin mother of Buddha - enlightenment incarnate), to the Virgin Mary (another human mother of a famous God incarnate on earth). Even the Sage-prophet Merlin (from the grand Arthurian tradition - Christianized from more ancient pre-Christian Celtic mythology), is conceived of a virgin mother and a "golden being of light".

The promise for us within these stories is that we too can join with the Truth - and become the Sage-Prophet. And the Mother of the Prophet is a virgin because no physical union has occurred; when God penetrates into the soul, it is a purely spiritual act. As the physical feminine brings forth physical life, so, too, does the spiritual feminine bring forth spiritual life. It is through this aspect of the Goddess we hold in our hearts that we are reborn: not merely physical, but now spiritual beings.

When one has learned to resonate with and unify those divine elemental vibrations of earth and sky (that is, unify the two halves of consciousness - the terrestrially informed rational and celestially informed creative, the masculine and feminine, and the conscious and the unconscious), then they are invited to fly upon the wings of enlightenment up to a great pyramid of light upon which awaits the Lord Creator of the cosmos.

We are nearing the frontier of not only a new millennium, but also a new era (or age) of man and civilization: the Aquarian (or 4th) Age. The symbolism (the language of the universal dreamscape) of the Ages of Man tries to articulate the aspirations of humanity - our hopes for the future. But these same symbols also indicate the price of failure in these endeavor. We cannot escape the future or avoid the risks, but we can proceed with greater resolve and clarity of purpose if we possess an awareness of the dangers.

The Age of Taurus (4000 - 2000 B.C.) is symbolic of origins: the collective origin of civilization in the middle east, and the individual origin of consciousness. This is the winter of infancy, when our experience of the world is limited to physical sensation. Taurus is an earth symbol.

The Age of Aries (2000 B.C. - 0) is symbolic of the split into opposites. Collectively this division can be interpreted as the distinctions between the linear thinking west and the cyclical thinking east, or liberal idealism and conservative pragmatism, or even this nation and that; individually this represents the division of mind into the conscious and unconscious domains. This is the spring of youth, when developing emotions both construct and distort our view of the living experience. Aries is a fire symbol.

The Age of Pisces (0 - 2000 A.D.) is symbolic of the opposites in conflict: ideology against ideology, nation against nation, brother against brother, man against woman, and the conscious mind against the unconscious. This is the summer of maturity, when the developed rational intellect attempts to impose its will upon an unyielding nature. Pisces is a water symbol.

The Age of Aquarius (2000 - 4000 A.D.) is symbolic of the union of opposites: all those things rent asunder shall come together in harmony and co-operation. It is dreamt of as a utopian era free of the unceasing conflict that characterized and traumatized the Piscean Age. It is to be a time of miracles beyond imagination, when ideas, nations, men and women, and the unified mind all work together toward an objective so wonderful that it defies the Piscean imagination. This is the autumn of old age, when wisdom - tempered by knowledge and experience - can at last make the intuitive leap to conceive of a new way of existing in absolute empathy with ourselves, our neighbors, humanity, and the planet earth itself. The Aquarian Age is an archetype of paradise where the 4 cardinal virtues (Temperance, Justice, Fortitude, and Prudence) mediate every interaction from the individual to the global. Aquarius is an air symbol.

This is a quite extraordinary ambition, and like most people, I harbor grave doubts as to whether such a future is even possible, let alone probable. But the hope we have for such a future is pervasive, persistent, and ancient. In fact, there are many people who believe the world once knew an Aquarian civilization: Atlantis. Nobody knows for certain whether Atlantis really existed or not - the skeptically inclined (myself included) aren't prepared to accept Plato's musings on the subject without genuine evidence. The question that always arises is: How can it be possible that no archeological trace of Atlantis, nor any artifact even possibly Atlantean has ever been found? There are many unsatisfying answers in reply. But there is at least one plausible explanation, enigmatic in its eerie accordance with symbolic prediction: Atlantis, and every record of its existence, was scraped from the face of the earth in the last ice age.

Symbolically, these Ages of Man are analogous to the seasons, and with each new year the whole cycle of life (or civilization) must begin again. A utopian epoch in an autumnal age must necessarily be followed by a great winter. Modern geology suggests that the earth's history is punctuated by just such great winters: glacial ice ages. Just as the last autumnal epoch, Gemini, was followed by the Winter of Taurus, so too must the Age of Aquarius be followed by the Age of Capricorn - an earth destiny sign, and an age of winter.

In this image, I have chosen to represent that poorly understood force of nature that initiates such glaciation, as an angel upon the symbolic top of the world. She looks to the heavens (where the zodiacal position of the sun at the vernal equinox determines which Age it is) waiting for a sign, some indication that her time has come, and that she must now prosecute a terrible celestial judgement upon planet earth. The warning to mankind is clear: we do not have forever to realize our Aquarian objectives. The certainty of annihilation - by a miles high continent of ice - imposes a time-limit on our aspirations to succeed and live, rather than fail and die, like Atlantis. Will humanity work together and triumph? The celestial clock is ticking and the messenger of cosmic will is waiting...