Ambergold transformations

"You ask of my companions. 

Hills, sir, and the sundown..."
- Emily Dickinson, in a letter to Mr. Higginson

It is the first of October and my world is an Ivan Shishkin painting and a Luke Gibson song, who I listened to yesterday while driving through these highlands, with their ambergold light and crisp changed air.

Autumn is the season most reflective of my inner world. And it seems to me the most Celtic-feeling season of the year, most reflective of an old world quality, most liminal. 

Winter is lovely too--in places where the snow is plentiful--but winter can feel skeletal. In Fall there is still meat on the bone, but more matured than summer, and much more inward than summer- the chatty extrovert.

Still being in the summer of my life, maybe that is why I rarely feel at home or situated in it; since Fall is the season that resonates so deeply, I suppose I have much to look forward to for that season of life yet to come. 

Earlier in the summer, I was in Spokane for the day poking around a great little antique shop I had found. Back in the corner was a treasure trove of old photos and magazines. I spent at least an hour sitting cross-legged in the back corner perusing all of these old photos and assembling a big stack to take home with me. The images were mostly anonymous and usually timeless, except for the random note some of them would have scribbled on the back (e.g. "Bert's first deer, Oct 1932" or "Deception Pass, 1935"). I'm not sure why this sort of thing feels so fascinating to me, but it does! So, with the inspiration of the magazine clippings (most from the old "American West" magazines) and the photos, I've been piecing together little... collages, I guess you would call them. I'm not sure. But here are the ones I made this morning:

And here is another one in the works, though I haven't glued the photos in place yet and I plan to add some stitching later on...

When it comes to art and the handmade, I've also been spending time each day slowly building a scarf. It's an intricate pattern which is challenging my knitting skills in new ways. Certainly no beginners scarf, it is the Windy Scarf by Martin Storey, and I plan to gift it as a Christmas present (if I can complete it correctly and in time!).

And of course I always have a strange embroidery piece going. I started embroidering many years ago and my embroideries tend to involve esoteric symbolism which seem to grow more peculiar the deeper I go. This time, it is Rebis- the Great Work, the ultimate balance, the realized Self though still contained and corporeal, the male-female, the solar and lunar, these principles and more, in an inner balance and order. Certainly inspired by my reading of Eros and the Mysteries of Love earlier this year, and still a work in progress.

I am a seeker, if nothing else. Devoted to my spiritual quest. I love to take experiential approaches to wisdom which I think is a superior form of knowing, but I also wholeheartedly enjoy the intellectual seeking as well, though I'm aware it isn't an end in itself. Sometimes the intellectual seeking will open doors in my mind, through which I can then walk my feeling body. I especially love when I learn things intellectually that resonate strongly with my intuition, which happened multiple times this summer whilst reading "The Mystery of the Grail" and finally coming to understand this grail cycle, particularly the non-physical nature of it. But recently I have been getting all sorts of rapturous delights learning about this new topic I came across during one of my rabbit hole jaunts. It is called BioGeometry and it is a lovely marriage of two of my passions in this life: esoteric wisdom and health.

Upon first glance, to the untrained mind, BioGeometry might seem like a pseduoscience or airy-fairy woo-woo, but this is far from true. BioGeometry is qualitative physics, and it occupies a pristine frontier for understanding health, and reality, in the modern age. 

If you are interested, I'll explain it in this nutshell: BioGeometry is the science of space energy balancing, with it we can learn how to take disruptive energies--rather than trying to block or avoid them--and transform them (in this way, I suppose it's very tantric in nature). Because we are enveloped in a sea of invisible disruptive energies called electro-magnetic frequencies, which wreak havoc on our health from every angle, you can maybe begin to see how powerful the implications are both on a personal and very large scale, yes?

Here are some resources for anyone who would like to run down this rabbit hole with me:

• BioGeometry and Life Force with Dr. Ibrahim Karim (video)
  
  
• A great interview with Dr. Karim's daughter, Doreya (video)
  
  
• A playlist of lectures for the devoted student
  
  
• And Dr. Karim's book which I'm just beginning:
  
  
  
  
  

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It is already that time of the year again. Soon, we make the eastward migration to spend time with family for a few months. I am always pulled in two directions with this, but there's no use going into all that. It is what it is, and it is a good idea for me in this life to accept what is as much as possible, while quietly working behind the scenes to make adjustments and optimizations. But something tells me this will be the last time I leave my home in the winter, certainly for so long.

I wish anyone reading this a lovely autumn.
Blessings to you all.

Saturday Intensive

 A strong wind blew through late in the night while we were sleeping, leaving a fresh--early Spring--dusting of snow on the high foothills, which I stood and admired out the window early this morning as I sipped coffee.

But I couldn't stand and sip coffee and coo over beauty for too long as this weekend is my Ayurvedic intensive. We have one each month. It's 20 hours of school in one weekend. Arduous as it is, because the school is done via Zoom these days, I usually manage to get some craft projects completed on intensive weekends.

There was a purple hat that needed finishing, so I tended to that.

Then I began knitting a scarf, but turned it into a cowl, deciding it would make a boring and stiff scarf. I think for this kind of wool, a scarf would look better if I held two strands together to create a looser knit. Or something to this effect. So, a cowl it was! And since chunky cowls are pretty quick going, I finished it in one sitting, working in a basket weave stitch.

Now, as the shadows stretch out and the end of the day grows nigh, I'm just going to finish my latest embroidery, which means stitching a piece of fabric on the back to hide all of the thread chaos. 

My brain is weary with so much new information, as it always is with these intensives, and to think I still have a full 10-hour day tomorrow... phew...wish me luck.

Knitterly Things

This knitting hobby of mine is beginning to stack up. It seems I almost have a small knitwares shop on my hands, kept neatly tucked away in a brown paper bag in my crafts closet. Though it'd have to be a shop offering only hats, cowls, and ear warmers. 

I even designed a logo and had it printed onto suede tags to give things a more professional and finished look. 

Maybe when Autumn comes 'round again, I'll open a real shop.

Maybe.