tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14474903842988354792024-02-21T03:12:16.029+01:00What The Fire SaidNew Rituals for a New WorldHawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.comBlogger108125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-55525140431539439462021-06-08T13:54:00.002+02:002021-06-08T14:11:50.604+02:00Nefertiti<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDNpi1bhsG_jsI2ZgsTKKJoW92UsWCp3m3y4M1VwAJJB9-pCEAJPbig2oYwLVGCjG3EwYcSMVYECa1arwtInT1moCV9ld9MJ4eMVSei2ZUOLGEP09fdlRdnTbm9Pe2S8TmeMaT4rLZtkv4/s624/Queen-Nefertiti_%25C2%25A9_David-Bergen-Studio_whatthefiresaid.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="624" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDNpi1bhsG_jsI2ZgsTKKJoW92UsWCp3m3y4M1VwAJJB9-pCEAJPbig2oYwLVGCjG3EwYcSMVYECa1arwtInT1moCV9ld9MJ4eMVSei2ZUOLGEP09fdlRdnTbm9Pe2S8TmeMaT4rLZtkv4/s16000/Queen-Nefertiti_%25C2%25A9_David-Bergen-Studio_whatthefiresaid.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">Her name means ’The Beautiful One Approaches’. She was the wife and the queen of the heretic king Akhenaten, reigning in the new capital which had been stamped out of the virgin desert a symbolic halfway between the cities of Memphis in the north and Thebes in the south. The king named his new city Akhetaten – ‘Aten on the Horizon’, although it has become more familiar to us from the name of the nearby contemporary town of Amarna.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">Nefertiti presented her husband with three daughters. But then as now it was a man’s world, and it was a lesser consort who gave the king the necessary male heir: an ineffectual ruler who died before his twentieth year. The son might have remained an obscure name on the fringes of history but for an extraordinary twist of fate – the discovery of his intact tomb in 1922. The son’s name was Tutankhaten. His change of name tells its own story. With his father’s death, the boy was an easily-manipulated puppet of the priests ready to claim back power, and his name was changed to Tutankhamen.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">The glories of the royal court at Amarna collapsed back into the desert sands, its very stones rifled to rebuild the temples of the old gods. Nefertiti, now a widow with a disintegrating power base, must manoeuvre to survive. But did she? History has left no record of the queen’s fate, and we are left to wonder. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">Nefertiti’s legendary beauty is wholly due to the surviving portrait bust of her in the Berlin Museum: a bust which has become so iconic that it takes an effort to think one’s way past it. But I wanted deliberately to pull the focus of attention away from the familiar tall crown back to the queen herself: a very human woman contemplating the best way to move forward in a hazardous and politically adverse world almost three and a half millennia removed from our own. And it seemed only fitting to include the queen’s personal cartouche – a cartouche that was deliberately defaced from the stones of Amarna by the reinstated priests.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">You can read and see more about Akhenaten, Nefertiti and the royal court of Amarna at: <a href="http://shadowsineden.blogspot.nl/2013/10/the-amarna-heresies.html">http://shadowsineden.blogspot.nl/2013/10/the-amarna-heresies.html</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuTZfR_L5FRMgnOcdTxyxMT9ZzgC_HqMNecrBtAM3QTjeO8IZnSebwfJaznKJr4eVKLq405ElYW1RtLBNxgFVpxAfKRT50nUqKyAwug4_6vy3pYWW-GAKEMzDnqHKy9l2HY2naE1y-8-w_/s624/Queen-Nefertiti_%25C2%25A9_David-Bergen-Studio_whatthefiresaid.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="624" height="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L7K9wOadf9g/YL9ZdOf2bpI/AAAAAAAAIvc/ejKBFQB9HBAvUj79t-WNW1qVcjd1EPUSwCLcBGAsYHQ/w161-hInfinity/Queen-Nefertiti_%25C2%25A9_David-Bergen-Studio_whatthefiresaid.png" width="161" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-32057473436886113782016-07-25T13:00:00.001+02:002016-08-21T07:59:52.663+02:00Three Brides<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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My portrayal of the 'three brides' of Dracula in Bram Stoker's narrative. What are we to make of these exotic creatures? They seem more like elaborate dolls than anything human. Perhaps this indeed is the case for these three who have abandoned their humanity in favour of a hollow moonlit immortality.</div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-110696838051827922016-07-25T12:55:00.002+02:002016-07-25T12:55:41.221+02:00Words of Warning<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words, for there were many nationalities in the crowd, so I quietly got my polyglot dictionary from my bag and looked them out. I must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were “Ordog”—Satan, “Pokol”—hell, “stregoica”—witch, “vrolok” and “vlkoslak”—both mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is either werewolf or vampire."</div>
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~ From Jonathan Harker’s journal, as related in Bram Stoker's <i>Dracula. </i>This astonishing five-horned skull actually exists: I photographed it as a specimen of a fossil deer in Naturalis Museum in Leiden, then added even more horns for effect. Apparently one can never have too many horns when portraying these darker forces.</div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-50453940927962169442016-07-25T12:47:00.001+02:002021-06-07T08:30:17.617+02:00Dracula<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It has become something of a tradition to assume that Bram Stoker’s inspiration for the character of Dracula stemmed from the exploits of the 15th-century Romanian tyrant Vlad Țepeș - Vlad the Impaler. I disagree, and instead have come to conclude that the true origins of the character lay much closer to home for Stoker, and with an individual who dominated his own life: his overbearing employer, the despotic actor-manager Sir Henry Irving, for whom Stoker worked for 27 years, and whom Stoker seems to have both loathed and revered. Stoker even asked the charismatic Irving to portray Dracula on the stage – a role which Irving, perhaps aware of how much of himself had been written into the character, consistently declined. In my 'portrait' of the Count Stoker’s wish has at last been fulfilled: it is the features of Irving himself which form the basis for my own Dracula.</div>
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Does an imagined portrait of the notorious Count really need a heavy emphasis on blood and fangs? Not to me. Horror is in suggestion: in what you think you see, rather than in literal detail, and menace and dark charisma can be as much in the eyes as in more obvious attributes. And there is no actual 'blood' anywhere here: what you see is merely an overlay of brushstrokes.</div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-66165430751713124002015-12-23T14:04:00.001+01:002016-07-21T21:06:16.330+02:00Sister Bertken<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Why would a woman allow herself to voluntarily be walled up in a small cell with no way out, not for a fixed period of time, but for the rest of her life? In the 15th-century Sister Bertken of Utrecht did exactly this, and her story confronts us both with our own reactions to her extraordinary decision and ultimately with what faith actually is.</div>
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You can read more about Sister Bertken and her remarkable story on my post <a href="http://shadowsineden.blogspot.nl/2015/12/sister-bertken-woman-in-wall.html" target="_blank">The Woman in the Wall</a>. </div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-258605046724929832015-12-14T11:56:00.000+01:002016-07-21T21:07:01.192+02:00Mary of Egypt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Having run away from home at the tender age of twelve, Mary lived a dissolute life in the city of Alexandria for the next seventeen years. She then journeyed to Jerusalem, where a conversion experience led her to cross the River Jordan and live a life in the unforgiving wilderness of the Jordanian desert as a reclusive naked penitent, not for months, nor even for years, but for almost five decades. At the end of her life she was discovered by chance by the monk Zosimas, to whom she told her story. In conventional terms Mary’s life is a textbook example of redemption through faith, but in human terms her story is one of astonishing survival, and a life which brings us to the threshold of what faith is, and how as individuals we conduct ourselves in the light of that faith. But for me, Mary's story is not so much about the mysteries of faith, but the greater mysteries which the human heart contains. </div>
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You can read more about Mary and her life on my post <a href="http://shadowsineden.blogspot.nl/2015/11/mary-of-egypt-heart-in-wilderness.html" target="_blank">Mary of Egypt: A Heart in the Wilderness</a>.</div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-15761241029880701612015-12-01T14:53:00.000+01:002016-07-21T21:16:41.387+02:00Pandora<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The story of Pandora, the first woman on Earth, who opened the forbidden box and so released all of the sorrows and misfortunes into the world, is one which has entered into folklore. But the familiar myth needs some revision. The 'box' is actually a mistranslation from the original Greek, which specifies the vessel as a lidded pot or jar. And the parallels with the story of Eve in Eden are unmistakable: it is a woman’s curiosity that is to blame for all the ills that afflict humankind. But as with the Eden story, perhaps the truth is less simplistic. Eve in her wisdom released all the human travails, knowing that the encounter with these was needed in order for the soul to progress in experience. Wise Pandora acted out of the same motives, and with the same result: she has been blamed ever since for all the ills which afflict humankind. But Pandora was wise in another detail of the myth: she kept Hope in the jar. Hope is a mixed blessing, which can prove to be as deceitful as it can be rewarding. ‘False hope’ is not just a phrase, and Pandora perhaps deserves our gratitude, rather than our blame.</div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-58382836123433849902015-11-02T11:04:00.004+01:002021-06-13T19:59:27.160+02:00Where I Live<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Some time ago I created a series of photos documenting the woods near where I live. The only rule I gave myself was that all the photos should be taken just a few minutes’ walk from my front door. Now I have revisited those original photos, reshaping them as if through the veil of memory: a record, not of these scenes as they are, but as I remembered how they felt to me when I was there.<br />
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-73242893099998651662015-03-24T12:43:00.000+01:002016-07-21T21:36:03.844+02:00The Gospel of Mary<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Who was Mary Magdalene? Thanks to a misguided assumption about a passage in Luke's gospel by Pope Gregory I in the 6th-century, the erroneous tradition that Mary was a redeemed whore has persisted for fourteen long centuries. But the text of the Gospel of Mary, written three centuries earlier, reveals a very different Mary. The image of Mary in the gospel which bears her name is of a woman of great dignity, leadership, personal courage and deep spiritual insight: a view of the Magdalene as remote from her misguided portrayal down the centuries as is possible.<br />
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We have three surviving fragmentary copies of the text known as the Gospel of Mary, all of them from Egypt. One discovered near the town of Akhmim is from the 5th-century and written in Coptic, and the other two from the 3rd-century and written in Greek were discovered in an ancient refuse dump at Oxyrhynchus – a valuable archaeological site which also has yielded some of the poetry of Sappho.<br />
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The Gospel of Mary is the only known gospel to be attributed to a woman. Unlike the verses of Sappho, we cannot know who wrote it, any more than we can ascertain who really wrote the four canonical gospels. What we can say is that its unknown author wrote from a viewpoint that is so sympathetic to a woman’s perspective, so insightful, that it could indeed have been written by a woman, which would have been entirely feasible in an early Christian Gnostic community.</div>
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Being closer to the source, this text offers us perhaps a more authentic Mary: a Mary who is indeed a wise and profound teacher, and who is even the closest to Jesus and most deserving of his disciples. This Mary is a very long way indeed from the redeemed whore perpetuated by the Church, and the time for her overdue and deserved reinstatement is now.<br />
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You can read more about the Gospel of Mary on my other blog <a href="http://shadowsineden.blogspot.nl/2015/03/the-gospel-of-mary.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-89509470280230400072015-03-13T09:10:00.001+01:002016-07-23T08:45:16.199+02:00Sword Dancer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Below the ochre cliffs tall grasses</div>
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stir to the wind’s slow dance, </div>
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move graciously in time</div>
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to the measure of the years.</div>
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And I, now grown old, make my own </div>
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movements in time,</div>
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retrace those years,</div>
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return to the Emperor’s golden court</div>
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and another age, full fifty years before</div>
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as the cliff, the grasses, all that is around me</div>
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grows vague with an old longing</div>
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and momently disappears.</div>
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She moves as a sword sweeps:</div>
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her long sleeves carve an arc</div>
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through the mythic space</div>
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of her court performance</div>
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that is the arena of her mind:</div>
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a space as invisible as the traceries</div>
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of the coursing stars, and as defined.</div>
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Shaking clouds of dark anger</div>
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from those same sleeves,</div>
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the rolling thunder growls:</div>
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a beast slipped from its leash,</div>
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rampaging, raging, until the storm is done.</div>
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And I, stunned to silence among her audience</div>
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can only watch, wait for the storm to pass,</div>
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wait for the sleeves to shake out calm reprieves:</div>
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the still air, and the high silence of birds</div>
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grazing the bronze face of a late and courtly sun.</div>
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Rustling pearled tiara, layered silk brocade</div>
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and the very air we breathed </div>
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slit by the passage of her pliant blade:</div>
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Lady Gongshun, the sword dancer</div>
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from the city of the White Goddess,</div>
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moves in silence, moves in thunder,</div>
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her feet frame questions</div>
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as her sword gives answer:</div>
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one world is created, another splits asunder.</div>
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The west wind veils the golden court</div>
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with dust from the inland plains.</div>
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The Lady, the grasses: all I see around me</div>
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grows vague with an old longing</div>
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and only the dance remains</div>
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in the arena of my mind:</div>
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a dance as invisible as the traceries</div>
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of the coursing stars, and as defined.</div>
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© David Bergen </div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-28647562256592463562015-01-31T12:23:00.000+01:002016-07-22T11:11:08.157+02:00Thecla<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The companion of Paul the Apostle, Thecla seems in every way to have been a woman in her own right. Almost all that we know about her comes from a damaged apocryphal manuscript in Coptic known as <i>The Acts of Paul</i>, in which is recounted her seemingly miraculous deliverances from death in the Roman arenas of two cities. On the first occasion in the city of Iconium, while being tied to the stake with the pyre beneath her feet having been already set to the torch, a deluge of rain poured out of a clear sky and extinguished the flames. The following apparently miraculous deliverance found place in the arena of the city of Antioch, when a group of lionesses formed a protective circle around her and fought off the aggressive male lions.</div>
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How to unravel these more legendary aspects of her life from the Thecla of history? What these stories about her express – and the apparent esteem in which she was held by her followers – reveal to us a beautiful, charismatic and principled woman who enjoyed the respect and loyalty of her community. Copies in Greek of the damaged text of the <i>Acts</i> indicate that in later years she became a recluse, dedicating herself to a life of prayer and meditation, and living into her 90’s. Perhaps somewhere between the miracles and the meditations is the true Thecla, the Thecla of the spirit: a Thecla who still can touch us with her grace if we open ourselves to her.</div>
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You can read more about Thecla and her times in my post: <a href="http://shadowsineden.blogspot.nl/2015/01/thecla-woman-between-rain-and-fire.html" target="_blank">Thecla: A Woman between Rain and Fire</a>.<br />
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My painting of Thecla also features in my video: <a href="http://youtu.be/49Urkum1F0Y" target="_blank">Invocation</a>.</div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-41774307221302774862015-01-21T13:00:00.002+01:002016-07-22T16:10:40.469+02:00Princess Andromeda<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This is my second version of this subject, and the one which I personally prefer. When I first came to tackle the subject I had the option either of being ethnically correct or of going with the traditional portrayals of the 'Grecian' princess who was rescued from the sea monster by the hero Perseus - although my interpretation then, as now, holds the implication that the monster is in reality Andromeda's protector in defiance both of Perseus and a familiar reading of the myth. When it came to portraying Andromeda I opted for tradition, and have regretted it ever since. Now I have chosen to be faithful to her ethnicity. Andromeda was, after all, a princess of Ethiopia.</div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-59334558546858918702015-01-11T13:11:00.000+01:002016-07-22T10:00:07.211+02:00The Lovers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This silence is not the silence</div>
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of the vast space between the stars.</div>
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Neither is it the silence</div>
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of the dim grey light before the dawn.</div>
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This is the greater silence of lovers</div>
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that has no need of words.</div>
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A wide cloth, spread between two</div>
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as easily covering as removed:</div>
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a white membrane –</div>
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both birth-sack and winding-cloth</div>
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for past selves left far behind:</div>
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forever changed by these infinities</div>
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of transformation, gold and white</div>
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uniting in an alchemical wedding.</div>
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White queen, red king,</div>
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and all the world their court.</div>
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Glistening, new-formed:</div>
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these are no masks they wear</div>
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but their true selves</div>
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with all else burned away</div>
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in the white fire</div>
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of love’s simple existence.</div>
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For love has no need of masks</div>
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and acceptance is all</div>
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and everything.</div>
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<i>Text © Emma Bergen</i></div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-24224066124208735522015-01-09T10:56:00.000+01:002016-07-22T12:17:04.036+02:00Lucy Westenra<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Where lies the true horror? In the story of Bram Stoker’s <i>Dracula</i> we tend to think of the horror of blood and vampire fangs. Such things are the thrill of 19th-century sensational melodrama, but what makes such gothic classics endure is the way in which they tug us towards deeper truths that we all at some level recognize, and we recognize them because they somewhere lie within our own personal experience. </div>
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In Stoker’s narrative it is the events which occur both to and around Lucy Westenra that form a pivotal focus in the story. In spite of the heroic efforts of the Dutch vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing to prevent the encounter, Lucy is stalked and bitten by Dracula. She wastes away and apparently dies, but her coffin is later discovered to be empty. Lucy has become one of the ‘Un-Dead’; has herself become a vampire.<br />
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It is the true horror of possession, of desiring total mastery over another, which we recognize. Lucy is no longer ‘Lucy’. She becomes a sad walking puppet, a thing of unnatural desires neither living nor truly dead. We ourselves perhaps know of someone in our own circle of acquaintances whom we feel has been ‘taken over’ by another, who has become so compliant to the will of that other person that they adopt that person’s mannerisms, figures of speech, ways of dressing, view of things. Just think of the many religious cults and the way in which they maintain their members. Vampirism of the mind is still vampirism, and the legions of these particular 'undead' are real enough.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My video of <i>Dracula</i> featuring this painting of Lucy can be viewed on YouTube here: <a href="http://youtu.be/yMtCaR32sfk" target="_blank">Dracula: Darkness Rising</a>.</span></div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-76777207534459553892014-07-31T10:16:00.000+02:002016-07-22T11:15:02.873+02:00Anthony of the Desert<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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What drives a man to walk away from his wealthy estate and march off into the unforgiving dunes of the North African desert? I find it difficult to recognize such a bravura gesture as an act of faith in any conventional sense. Were that so, then Anthony would have continued to bow to an acceptably orthodox Church authority. But he walked away from that as well. Others seeking to find grace among the desert’s terrible purity had left their footprints in the sand before him, but their tracks went no farther than the outskirts of Alexandria.</div>
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What made Anthony different is that he went farther than any before him. Far to the south of Alexandria Anthony settled into the rough shelter that was to become his hermitage, there to undertake what we would now perhaps more readily recognize as a vision quest.</div>
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Anthony’s beliefs were an intensely personal form of Gnosticism – of a seeking for a direct experience of the Divine through privation-induced visions. It was these beliefs which cut him loose from the authority of the Church hierarchy, and which therefore presented the Church with a problem. Over the years the hermit’s fame spread, and his devotional asceticism captured the popular imagination of the time.<br />
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What to do about Anthony? For the Church to chastise the wayward hermit in such a climate of popularity was an unfavourable option. The solution was found after Anthony’s death by Athanasius, the influential bishop of Alexandria. The bishop wrote a presumed biography of Anthony, reinventing the hermit, not as the lettered scholar which Anthony truly was, but as a humble and illiterate monk who devotedly upheld the very principles of obedient orthodoxy which the real Anthony in his life abjured. Athanasius even appended a wholly fictitious ending in which the hermit presents the bishop with his cloak as his worthy successor.</div>
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For centuries the biography by Athanasius was accepted as literal fact; so much so that the very Gnostic Anthony, as we know, has even received sainthood. It was only after Anthony’s own letters came to light that the bishop’s subterfuge has been realised, and his own agenda has been revealed as a maneuver of the power politics of the Church of that time.</div>
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There are many depictions of Anthony from various periods of art history, from the soberly contemplative saint of Albrecht Dürer to the bizarre visions of Hieronymus Bosch. But generally these opt for a portrayal of the grizzle-bearded hermit in advanced years in the setting of his retreat, surrounded by a lurid phantasmagoria of grotesque monstrosities and tempted by equally phantom wanton females. But what compels me more than these is the Anthony who walked away, the young man (he was then in his early thirties) who turned his back on his considerable earthly wealth to pursue his own intensely personal vision of things.<br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sources:</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Samuel Rubenson: <i>The Letters of Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint. </i>A&C Black, 1995. Just how profoundly Gnostic Anthony actually was is revealed in Professor Rubenson's book, an extract of which can be read <a href="http://books.google.ca/books?id=rxxgPixcz3MC&pg=PA59&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">here</a>. Anthony was not the only Gnostic to be 'reinvented' by the orthodox Church to drive its own agenda. Both Clement of Alexandria and Paul himself were subjected to the same process.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Gustave Flaubert: <i>The Temptation of Saint Antony. </i>Translated and with an introduction by Kitty Mrosovsky<i>. </i>Penguin Classics, 1983. Flaubert's daring experiment with the literary form, using Anthony's visions as inspiration, and written as a play not intended for actual performance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">More about the conflict of truth between Anthony and Athanasius can be read at: <a href="http://shadowsineden.blogspot.nl/2012/07/anthony-of-desert-life-as-fiction.html" target="_blank">Anthony of the Desert: Life as Fiction</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Portrayals of Anthony and his visions by a variety of artists can be seen at: <a href="http://theoppositeofamoth.blogspot.nl/2012/07/city-of-alexandria-in-egypt-in-year-285.html" target="_blank">Temptations</a>.</span></div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-55611132745859065812014-06-22T12:50:00.000+02:002016-07-22T16:12:16.942+02:00Andromeda and the Monster<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It was, of course, asking for trouble. When Queen Cassiopeia made the claim that she considered herself more beautiful even than the sea nymphs of Poseidon, the god who was the sea demanded retribution. Chained to an offshore rock, her daughter Andromeda now waits in helpless terror for the arrival of the sea monster that will devour her. In myth, victorious rescue is preordained, and the hero Perseus will arrive from the skies to do battle with the monster and win fair Andromeda’s hand.</div>
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Perhaps the myth hints at other possibilities. Perhaps the princess is more powerful than this traditionally masculine reading of the myth allows her to be. Andromeda, with all the power she commands, has made a pact with the serpent, who is really her guardian. Entwining her in its radiant coils, the monster will protect the princess against all threats.</div>
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Understanding none of this, brash Perseus in his glinting armour wings towards the pair above the moonlit Mediterranean waves, and the monster, to protect its mistress, knows that it must join battle with the meddlesome hero. Andromeda, princess of monsters, must wish that the outcome will favour her protector, although the myth dictates otherwise. And yet she must hope against hope that, for once, the myth will be rewritten in the monster’s favour.</div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-73784561866371740762014-06-11T10:21:00.000+02:002016-07-22T10:02:23.981+02:00The Four Elements: Symbols<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Traditionally there are <span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[1]</span>four winds, four cardinal directions, <span style="color: #7f6000; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[2]</span>four temperaments and four elements. These symmetries stemmed from the enquiring minds of the Classical World, and were further developed by the philosophers and mystics of later centuries in the application of alchemy. The four elements were said to form from the interaction of the further four qualities of hot, cold, wet and dry, and also represented four different phases of the alchemical work.</div>
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The traditional symbols for these elements are simple and direct: the four triangles in my painting above (<i>left to right</i>: water, fire, air and earth). When these four symbols are overlaid upon each other they form a six-pointed star. Our contemporary view recognizes this symbol as the familiar Star of David, but in traditional mysticism it represents the Hermetic ideal of ‘as above, so below’, with the combined triangles pointing both upwards to the heavens and downwards to our own world.</div>
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My painting is based upon the engraving of these personified symbols in D. Stolcius von Stolcemberg’s 17th-century <i>Viridarium Chymicum</i>. The figures have been adapted from Eadweard Muybridge’s 19th-century sequence of photographs of the dancer Isadora Duncan. I first considered using the photographs themselves, but from a reference point-of-view the quality of the images was too degraded, and I ended up completely repainting them. </div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Notes:</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">[1] <b>Also</b> <b>Four Gospels?</b></span> With considerably more presumption than logic, Irenaeus, the influential bishop of 2nd-century Lyons, taking the examples of four winds and four cardinal directions as his model, decided that there also should be four gospels. He then selected the four texts of his choice - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - to become </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">canonical, and</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">which now appear in the New Testament. This in turn meant that some thirty-odd other popular gospels then in circulation which in the bishop’s personal opinion did not measure up, and which otherwise would have made the New Testament as substantial as the Old Testament, hit the cutting room floor. It is an irony of history that Irenaeus’ bizarre reasoning was actually based upon Classical Greek – and therefore pagan – teachings.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">[2]</span> Choleric, sanguine, melancholic and phlegmatic.</span></div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-69532365377317798432014-05-31T17:09:00.000+02:002016-07-22T12:18:57.617+02:00The Ancient Mariner<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Surely the most Gothic poem outside the works of Poe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's extended masterpiece <i>The Rime of the Ancient Mariner</i> is uncompromising in its bleakness of vision, and in the force with which it carries the reader along with it on the mariner's dark voyage. The death of the albatross at the hand of the unnamed mariner which precipitates the curse upon him, the series of nightmare visions and supernatural occurrences, and the blessed moments of brief redemption, live on in the mind long after the poem has been read.<br />
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Certain phrases from the poem - 'All in a hot and copper sky', and 'Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink' - have become well-known enough to enter the language, and the poem's central image of the mariner burdened with the slain bird hung around his neck has become idiomatically descriptive of any difficulty that refuses to leave us.</div>
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My painting began life as a piece of commissioned art in oils for Penguin Books. Much later, dissatisfied with the changes to the art that were requested of me at the time and my own treatment of the subject, I extensively repainted it as the version which you see here. What perhaps is often overlooked is that the mariner is 'ancient' at the time that he is narrating the poem, not at the time that he made the voyage - which is why I have chosen to portray him, not grizzle-bearded, but rather in middle age.</div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-63760566383077059412014-05-18T16:09:00.000+02:002016-07-22T13:15:27.014+02:00Out of Africa<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Human fossil remains are always exceptional rarities. From such precious fragments we must attempt to glimpse our own human lineage as it stretches back beyond the borders of history into a past that, however distant it might seem from our own time, we nevertheless inhabited. This particular specimen, known at the time of its discovery almost a century ago as <i>Homo rhodesiensis</i> – Rhodesian man – is now considered to be an African version of the Neanderthal form, <i>Homo heidelbergensis</i>, although the scarcity of the remains makes any exact placement in the scheme of things tentative.</div>
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Even as science struggles to weigh and measure these questions, to classify and to define, we still are confronted with the remains of an individual human: someone who lived out his life, who in his existence was confronted with the daily issues of pain and loss and the small triumphs of simple survival. This particular individual knew physical suffering: his skull bears the signs of advanced tooth infection and decay which probably was the cause of death.</div>
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My photograph of the skull below was taken in the Naturalis museum in Leiden. The skull on display is a cast of the original: the actual fossil is simply too precious to be put on public display, and such casts are a means for museums to share knowledge. My life reconstruction above is a pencil drawing to which colour has been added digitally.<br />
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-79579529942250909402014-05-16T12:52:00.000+02:002016-07-23T07:46:04.047+02:00Ishtar<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Ishtar is perhaps the most widely-known name in the Mesopotamian pantheon. In Assyrian/Babylonian/Akkadian mythology she is the goddess of love and fertility, of war and sexuality. She is the ruler of the planet Venus, and her symbol is the eight-pointed star. This symbol is no random choice: rather, it reflects the emphasis which these civilizations placed upon astronomy and the scrupulous study of the heavens. As viewed from Earth, Venus describes a five-pointed figure through its orbit (which also is the origin of the familiar pentagram): a figure which takes exactly eight years to complete its cycle, as indicated by Ishtar’s symbol.</div>
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My painting, which incorporates the Babylonian Tree of Life diagram and, of course, the eight-pointed star, takes its inspiration from the alabaster statue of Ishtar housed in the Louvre. The statue is shown wearing a metal choker, and this also is featured in my depiction of the goddess.</div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-63830919133059173072014-05-13T11:34:00.000+02:002016-07-22T20:03:49.577+02:00Nienke and the Scattered Crests<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Some years ago Nienke was kind enough to be my model for a series of period costume paintings which I was working on at that time. She fell readily into the period of each costume, from the early 1800's to the 1920's, but it is a costume outside of that series which I have chosen for my portrait of her. This Japanese kimono is a copy of an 18th-century Edo period design known as 'scattered crests', in which the clan crests are printed randomly over the fabric, and Nienke's quiet poise complemented the busy design perfectly.</div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-23190264794997501142014-05-09T12:47:00.000+02:002016-07-21T20:37:17.560+02:00The Solace of Dreams<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In an unimaginably distant future we will surely still dream, and our dreams will be both our desires and our experiences of that world reshaped by our dreaming imagination. But will there be new possibilities open to us? Will we have new options, perhaps to record our dreams, to preserve them in some tangible form as images or even as objects? Will our dreams come to co-occupy the world of our waking reality? Perhaps we will be able to hook up with other dreamers and share what we are dreaming. But is this what we would wish for? Dreams as well are ‘a fine and private place’, and we might prefer to keep them as such. Then, as now, most dreams will burn up in the incendiary fires of re-entry into our everyday reality, and we might continue to wish it so. The solace of dreams might be that they remain in their own reality, and their reality is not ours.<br />
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-76338932663277011352014-05-03T16:50:00.001+02:002016-07-22T11:20:28.189+02:00Omar Khayyám<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In 11th-century Persia there lived an astronomer and mathematician by the name of Omar ben Ibrahim al-Khayyami, who, when he was not occupied with astronomical and algebraic calculations, for his pleasure wrote a series of verses which offer universal reflections on life, death and fate.</div>
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Seven centuries passed. Half a world away in Victorian England, a rather indifferent writer named Edward Fitzgerald decided to compose a translated version of the ancient Persian verses. Something mysterious happened. Between the alignment of minds that were the Persian astronomer and the Victorian writer emerged an extraordinary poet who resembled neither, and who - at least to English ears - eclipsed both. In the West we know those verses as <i>The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám</i>, and it is Fitzgerald's translation (which is more of an interpretation) which from its first appearance established itself as the definitive English version.</div>
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In Fitzgerald's version, Omar Khayyám comes across as a wonderfully pragmatic character, as fond of a carafe of wine as he is of a bit of philosophy, full of good humor in the face of an unrelenting fate. Portraits of Khayyám have tended to treat him as a sort of Middle-Eastern Confucius, white-bearded and sagacious. But I wanted to portray him as he is reflected by Fitzgerald: someone whose spirituality has a definite earthy twinkle in its eye. My background contains all three elements of his character: an astrolabe from the world of astronomy, one of his treatises on algebra ('al-jabra', which is where the term comes from), and, of course, the calligraphed title of the <i>Rubáiyát</i> which secured his immortality.</div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-62261337068575610282014-04-24T20:24:00.001+02:002016-07-23T08:46:29.025+02:00Sappho<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Sappho</div>
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The skies are dark</div>
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and raw Aegean winds</div>
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betray the sounds of your approach:</div>
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chattering sparrows</div>
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that draw your car of gold and chalcedony.</div>
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I wonder: do you come for me?</div>
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Why should you? When many another</div>
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would be glad enough of your visit</div>
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and think you generous,</div>
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passing around portions of love</div>
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to mortals grateful for such trinkets,</div>
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and willing enough to make some offering</div>
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in thanks to you, great Aphrodite.</div>
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For me, there is the heaving sea</div>
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beneath these cliffs,</div>
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deep as all the mysteries</div>
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voiced by gentle Orpheus</div>
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and as full of promise.</div>
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For me, there are these island lines,</div>
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limned with the dew of a thousand mornings </div>
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lying amber in dawn’s light</div>
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on the lithe and olive softness</div>
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of my lovers.</div>
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For me, there are these grey stones,</div>
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as hard and as dark</div>
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as your love truly is,</div>
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and as cold.</div>
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Why should you come to me,</div>
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great Aphrodite? Do you wish finally </div>
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to learn what love really is?</div>
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Do you wish me to teach you?</div>
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My love is not bestowed by a god.</div>
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My love is fire stolen from heaven.</div>
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My love would burn the sun’s face,</div>
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rake tracks across the moon</div>
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with cruel bright talons.</div>
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My love is without mercy.</div>
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My love takes no prisoners.</div>
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My love is the pain and terror</div>
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of a beast caught in a trap.</div>
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My love is a torch that burns</div>
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all who touch it, when they imagine</div>
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that all that it does is light their way.</div>
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No, great goddess. I do not need you,</div>
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with your golden sparrow-drawn car</div>
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and your love-charms pleasing to mortals</div>
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grateful for trinkets.</div>
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No, great goddess. It is you,</div>
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you, who needs me. </div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">© David Bergen</span></div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1447490384298835479.post-77759175994889494652014-04-23T16:20:00.003+02:002016-07-23T07:47:34.415+02:00The Eternal Mother<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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She has many names in many histories. She is young and full of hope for the future. She is as old as the earth, and has seen all things that have happened and that are still to come. Her likenesses in clay have been discovered in the earth of Mesopotamia, in ancient Canaan, and in a Europe so distant in time that we must count it in thousands of millennia. Some of her names we know: Astarte, Inanna, Eileithyia and more. Others even more ancient have been lost to us, but her likenesses, carved from stone or from mammoth ivory, endure. She is the bearer of new life, the Eternal Mother.</div>
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In her devotion to her own children, and in her giving them both the gift of their lives and their freedom to live their own, there could be no more appropriate model for my painting than my own wife, Emma. My painting is to honour her and all mothers. </div>
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Hawkwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07993700120131916459noreply@blogger.com0