Also, as part of the project, I’ve been asked to document my progress. This post is the first of these documents.

For the past three years I’ve been working on a project in which I let my intuition guide me. Now, with a new project before me I need a place to start. As this is a project based on the subconscious I have decided to base the project in magic. I had thought that perhaps I would use the opportunity to work with the Mansions of the Moon or the Astrological Decans but I want more freedom to let my intuition and unconscious lead the way. Besides, I was undecided how to begin. Therefore I drew ten tarot cards to guide me; three cards for each of the three pieces and one secret card to act as the overarching theme. The secret card suggested that this is to be a wholly new project. As for the other cards…

The first piece will be guided by The Wheel of Fortune, The Heirophant, and the Six of Wands.

Next

The second piece will be based on The Moon, the Ten of Cups, and the Six of Swords.

Lastly

The six of Cups, The World, and the Five of Wands.

Now begins meditation on the meanings of these spreads. There are some interesting patterns here. Each spread holds Major Arcana, sixes, and no Disks.

This image is inspired by my studies in astrology. The Moon and Saturn are in conjunction in my natal chart. It got me thinking of the two as one entity. The serpent with the skull head twines around and dances with the pale maiden.

Using some speaker wire my brother gave me, a turnbuckle, and some rigging hardware I have strung up a wire on which to hang my cloth backdrops.

The hardest part was hitting a stud in the wall behind the drywall. But it all fells secure.

Now I have a wire 8 feet long and approximately 8 feet off the floor to use as a background. After I got the wire set up I went to the Goodwill up the street and bought a king sized sheet to use for an initial backdrop. Then I took some test shots.

The framing is a little tighter than I had thought it might be but I can definitely work with this. Excellent… everything is going according to plan.

Oh, and I can’t spend any money to rent a space, at least not yet.

The obvious choice, I feel, is to convert my apartment into a space adequate for the project. For the past week I’ve been cleaning, rearranging, and getting rid of stuff. Now I (almost) have a space 8′ by 8′ in which to shoot.  The next issue is to get a changeable backdrop in place.

One idea I had was to construct a plywood stage, an 8′ floor with an 8′ wall. I could paint it whatever color I wanted and I could attach stuff to it to add things to the composition. I think I’m not going to use this idea. It is going to be bulky and expensive. The biggest restriction on this project is that it basically has no budget. At the moment I’m exploring the idea of using fabric backdrops. It has the advantage of being significantly less expensive and quite versatile.Now I just need a way to hang a piece of 8′ by 8′ fabric without drilling a bunch of holes in the walls or ceiling.

I’ve also decided that perhaps the Riddle of the Echo project has come to an end, or at least a diminishment. It has been a great project and I’ve gotten some wonderful reactions to the work but I feel like it is time to move on to something new. I’m a bit daunted by the prospect.

I have some elements of the decan project that I want to institute to expand on my abilities. The first is that I want to use live models. This is the greatest departure from my usual mode of working. Go back through the years and years of my making photographs and you’ll find very few people. On Monday I put an ad on Craigslist to see if anyone would even be interested and I got back more than 20 responses almost right away. It seems that people are ready to work as soon as I am.

The second rather large departure from my past work will be that I intend to shoot the project in color which means probably shooting it digitally. After being a staunch detractor of digital photography for so long I have mixed feelings about this. I think it will be good, however, to give my practice a bit of a workout where it is weak.

For the past few days I’ve been sketching out ideas, deciding what symbolic elements to include, and working to convert the front room of my apartment into a shooting studio that will accommodate the  project.

I still have a lot of questions to be answered. One that I’ve been asking myself quite a bit is whether or not I want these images to be shot strictly by the timing of the talismans of each decan. The Picatrix says that

“If you make the image when the corresponding planet is present in that face, then that work will be perfect and it will manifest in the world. If it happens that the sun is rising in the hour of the planet or combines with it in a way that you desire, the work will be stable and strong.”

This says to me that if a decan is ruled by Venus, for example, then the image should be made when the planet Venus is in that decan, on a Friday, in the hour of Venus, and preferably in the first hour of Venus, at dawn. More than anything else this will be challenging, especially as I’m dealing with other people’s schedules. I need to decide how important this is to the work. I already know that I’m not willing to wait for 20 or 30 years for Saturn to come around.

At any rate, more posts on the progress of this project will be coming up.

The Mind of the Raven is a photograph I made using some of the symbols gathered from alchemical texts. The raven is often symbolic of the nigredo stage in alchemy. The nigredo, or black stage, is the beginning when the old and vulgar material in which the Prima Materia lies hidden must die and rot away to make way for the next stages. The two fish in the head of the raven have a few meanings. First it is symbolic of the view that all this magick and myth come from the machinations of the mind. Consciousness is vast and teeming with all imaginable things. The fish are swimming in a circle or a spiral, a symbol of infinity. In Jungian analysis water and the ocean are symbolic of the unconscious mind and its unknowable depths.

The Book of Lambspring, another alchemical text, has a passage mentioning fish.

The Sea is the Body, the two Fishes are Soul and Spirit.

The Sages will tell you
That two fishes are in our sea
Without any flesh or bones.
Let them be cooked in their own water;
Then they also will become a vast sea,
The vastness of which no man can describe.
Moreover, the Sages say
That the two fishes are only one, not two;
They are two, and nevertheless they are one,
Body, Spirit, and Soul.
Now, I tell you most truly,
Cook these three together,
That there may be a very large sea.
Cook the sulphur well with the sulphur,
And hold your tongue about it:
Conceal your knowledge to your own advantage,
And you shall be free from poverty.
Only let your discovery remain a close secret.

The copy I’ve seen on the Alchemy Website has an illustration associated with it of two fish swimming in opposite directions in a river or inlet. The two fish are the soul and the spirit, that is consciousness, the connection to the divine, and the spark of animating life.
The raven as the beginning of the alchemical process of transformation already has in it the infinitude of the universe.

I find these attacks incredible. I want to attribute them to the Sterndhal Syndrome in which a person is so moved by the beauty of a piece of art that they become faint or ill, hallucinate, or engage in strange behaviors like punching a painting and urinating. Did she know what she was doing? Was she so filled with love or hate that she had to take her pants down and flail her arms like some berserker filled with bloodlust, temporarily blind and moving without thought?

I love the idea that a person can lose control of their mind and body when confronted with works of art. It speaks to the powerful spirituality inherent in works of creativity. It means that the presence of God can be felt reflecting from a piece like the heat from a piece of metal pulled from a  fire. It means that critical and intellectual discussions about art are secondary and border on being superfluous next to the sheer magic of beauty.

Asenath

Originally uploaded by unconsciouseye

Asenath was a figure from an apocryphal biblical story, Joseph and Asenath. The story goes that Pharaoh gave Asenath to Joseph to be his wife but Joseph refused her saying that he could not marry a pagan. Asenath, in order to make herself worthy, secluded herself and prayed to God to purify her. In response to her prayers an angel appeared before her and touched Asenath’s lips with a honeycomb. Bees immediately issued from the honeycomb, swirling around Asenath, stinging her lips. The honeycomb and the beestings removed the prayers to pagan gods from her lips. She was thereby purified and worthy to be wed to Joseph. Afterward they ruled Egypt together.I love this story. It has the flavor of one that is adapted from much older stories or traditions. Honey has been a powerful symbol since ancient times. It has been used as a food, a balm, and a preservative. All these thing are nourishing and empowering just in the way a blessing from God would be. For my photo here I’ve used a figure that is reminiscent of a saint in ecstasy, head thrown back, eyes closed, filled with the blessings of God. I’ve cut very small hexagons from the area of her mouth which both symbolize the honeycomb with which she is purified and act, visually, as a gag silencing her. From the edge of the honeycomb is a drip of honey running down her chin. This also has more than one connotation. First honey is the ‘food of the gods’ and represents gifts of the divine as well as nourishment on a fundamental level. It also has a vague sexual connotation as many examples of fluids dripping from the mouth can be found in the world of pornography. At her throat is a silhouette of a bee cut out and surrounded by a roughened, scratched area. This reinforces the bee as an active force in the story as well as becomes a sort of heraldic emblem for Asenath. Because it is at her throat it also references her voice and prayers to either the pagan or the Judean Gods. It also represents the act of swallowing whereby she is taking in and ingesting the honey, the spirit of the bee, and the blessings of God.

Actaeon

Originally uploaded by unconsciouseye

In Greek myth Actaeon was a hunter who happened upon a stream in which the goddess Athena was bathing. In retaliation for spying her while she was vulnerable she transforms Actaeon into a deer and he is subsequently pursued and killed by his own hunting dogs. Alchemists took Actaeon as a symbol of one who has seen through the veil of nature to gnostic truth. In alchemical prints and emblems he is depicted as a figure with antlers or a deer head. For the Riddle of the Echo project he is a symbol of transformation eternally in that magical place between animal and human, intellect and instinct, conscious and unconscious. The figure is from a book of 19th century paintings, the age of neoclassicism. His rack of antlers is large denoting maturity and power. His mouth is covered with the word ‘watching’ indicating his silence, his unending gaze, and the act which gives him his power. Beside him lies a dead fly symbolic of the casting off of the physical and transcending toward higher, spiritual realms.