Weekly Mandala: Wheel of the Year

The Wheel of the year here with the alternating energies of the Holly King and the Oak king. This was almost posted as a completely different piece, but I just wasn't satisfied with the overall look.  I reinvestigated the piece and came up with this instead.  This has more subtlety than the original and is more visually rich.

{Digital Images manipulated in Photoshop}

Entry into Netzach

As Neptune moves into Pisces today for the next fourteen years, I present this piece to you.  A great egg opening, revealing an expansive future, our minds growing like crystals in solution.  A door closed for so long suddenly opens and the inner sanctum is revealed.  The Butterfly emerging from the Chrysalis.

Weekly Mandala: The Hedgeway

Take heed, children of earth
the vast has taken notice of thee.
The great eye is loosed,
Thee world is changed.

A Quiet Death

With the dying of the light,
we rail against our injustices, we curse our unfairness.
We yearn for the halcyon days of always,
but I say to you,
be not fooled by the glittering lure of immortality.
Eternity holds more horrors than you can know.
In the folding of the great cloth,
we are all embalmed and bound and buried
under the silent weight of deep winter snow.
There are pale angels that govern these cold lands.
We rarely see them and often we curse them,
but they bring a grace and and a peace.
They move in silence, tending this, their garden.
Frosted and svelte like icicle tips
their gentle fingers quench the fires of earthly suffering.
This is their blessing, this quiet death.

Weekly Mandala: Malkuth Engine

Time slips in the pulsing.
Days blur into weeks,
mercury beading up and bouncing away.
Each pulse, another moment,
another year of my life bleeding like watercolors.
The Earth changes and changes and changes,
and how could I not join in,
how could I not?
I am lost,
and I am found,
but this isn't any kind of grace.
It's just dancing.
Through the doors,
through the many many doors,
shifting my weight and bending my arms,
turning with the flow and raising myself up.
I'm just dancing.

Neolithic

This one took a couple of months to resolve itself into this structure.  I came back to it on several different occasions to make sure it was finished with itself.  It was actually begun during the summer of 2011. There is some kind of comment about void thought going on here, but I have no idea what it might be.

Weekly Mandala: Between Chesed and Gevurah

The rotating pulse matrix of Solve et Coagula, Expansion and Contraction, Chesed and Gevurah.

BLACKING OUT AGAINST SOPA / PIPA

I tried to black things out on my blog, but I couldn't get the code to work so I am just going to make a regular post.

If you haven't become involved in the protest against SOPA and PIPA I ask that you do so now.  These bills will for all intents and purposes MAIM the internet.  I'm sure that many of the review blogs would be shut down almost immediately due to supposed copyright infringement issues.  Please read some of the information on SOPA and PIPA and I'm sure you will see the direction this will head if it is passed.  Go to the Wikipedia protest page to contact your government representatives and let them know what you think of this attempt at online censorship, please.

The High Priestess

Upon completing this, I immediately thought of The High Preistess card from the Tarot.  I really don't have much to bring other than that, but it was my first thought with this.

Weekly Mandala: Dark Diamond

Deep in the earth, a truth takes form.  Perhaps also, it seems to be rising up towards us or either we are falling toward it.  I also cannot tell if that is an object in the center, or a hole.  My original assumption was that we were looking down, but suddenly it has almost become a skylight with a starry night beyond.  Ah Mandala - you tease me with meaning!

The Lord of the Forest

I worked on this one throughout much of the end of the summer of 2011, but it did not resolve itself until winter had begun.  Some images of the Green man lurking in there, but also Cernunnos, Pan, and Baphomet.  Like the limbs of one great tree, the Lord of the Forest has many names and faces.

5x5 Issue Four Cover: The Mask of Fire

This was the image I created for the fourth issue cover of 5x5 fiction.  I had two 5x5 stories accepted to this issue.  Please check out the fourth issue!  I have also had two pieces accepted to issue four!

Hole in the Hedge

Recently I had my understanding of what a Hedge Witch is expanded. It made much more sense when I heard the name "hedge rider" for the first time.  I also looked at it in its historical context.  Back to the time in Europe when society was more agrarian, a hedge separated the human world (house, home, yard) from the wild world (forest, wood, plain).  this made much more sense to me.