mythic threads

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Lamb of God Holding the Opposites

For Aunt Shay (1924-2015), sculptress, and her bronze lamb.

24" diameter

Cotton and metallic threads

and glass beads

on muslin

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

AMOR FATI AND THE GOLDEN FLOWER

Amor Fati and the Golden Flower

12 inch diameter

Cotton threads and glass beads

On linen

Ouroborus

Hurricane

December 18, 2024

ODE TO FATE AND LOVE

Round bellied laughing luminous soul

How alive you sing

Through with and of

Fate’s reckoning

That never grips but

Opens doors to your house

And sanctifies who you are and why.

Round bellied crying robust soul

How sparkling your tears

Splash above and below

Fate’s pillar

That never falters but

Strengthens the roof of your house

And protects who you are and why.

Round bellied Buddha Goddess soul

How holy your riches

Shower away and toward

Fate’s spring

That never floods but

Washes the windows of your house

And gives sight to who you are and why.

Round bellied wonder warrior soul

How strong your center

Holds out and in

Fate’s womb

That never abandons but

Moves to the bedchamber of your house

And gives dreams of who you are and why.

Round bellied eternal feminine soul

How numinous your aura

Breathes invisible and tangible

Fate’s mystery

Whose unknown never frightens but

Travels from your house to garden

And plants seeds for who you are and why.

O Round bellied cherub infant soul

How golden the birth

Heralds to and from

Fate’s cradle

Whose promise never rocks but

Stills the Earth and heavens

And gives reason to who you are and why.

Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Hurricane Milton embroidery posts

These mandalas, stitched in 2024, I post as Hurricane Milton increases its roar where I live in Florida. Thankfully, I could post the below before loss of power.

My only question is, "Why Milton?" And so I rename this powerful storm, "Sophia."

SHE knows what she is doing.

STRAWBERRIES, BEES, AND LITTLE BOAS

12" diameter

cotton threads on linen

EVE AND THE ACCEPTABLE FRUIT

AND UNION OF THE OPPOSITES

This poem written in La Calmette as a "global warming" storm impacted my hamlet in the French Pyrenees.

FROM GOSPEL OF THE CELLS

July 14, 2002

HerRage repressed

Could hold no more.

Detonating heavens roared.

She flashed,

Crashing waves from above;

Madness pounding

The square of La Calmette.

Sheets of tears released,

Funneling gullies;

Anguish

Drenching

The Earth’s floor.

“No more!” She wept,

“No more

War.”

Shakedowns from branches

Stoned the forest path.

Winds screamed,

“Dead plums in the night!”

Breakdowns of stalks

Swept to swollen rivers.

Downpour roared,

“Corn rotted to the roots!”

All this—

The torrent of HerWrath,

Her truth.

I heard the peasant say it in a dream,

C’est le déluge du Nature,

Notre Terre, Notre Mère.

And in those corner rooms

Behind locked shutters,

Children huddled lost

From a lost summer.

Flickering lights from their T.V.

Speckled shadows on their faces

While night storms raged—

The bolts of Her electric madness

Swallowed shadows on the square

And children in the arms

Of their bewildered mothers

Sniffled, Maman, pourquoi?

We are silent.

The farmers, the students, the teachers;

The mothers; the fathers,

The leaders, the followers;

The ignorant, the wise.

Gnostics, agnostics,

The faithful, the knowing;

The poet, the madman, the thief.

We are stunned, we are silent;

Such is the pressure

Of our unacknowledged grief.

But yes, we know why.

Somewhere in the linings

Of our storm clouds

We know Her—

The greatEarth,

The reception of our deaths and births,

The chalice of our ashes and our bones,

The breast from which food flows;

The quencher of our thirst

The glory for our eyes

The music to our ears

The reverence to our nature;

Our fear,

The fear.

Oh Mother!

We shudder

In Her first light to the last

(The dawn of our resurrection

The dusk of our end)

So that we may begin again—

If only through her benevolence—

The only Mother of us all

The one Mother of us all

In whom we are born to trust.

The One we have betrayed.

And now Her torrential rage,

Held in HerBelly

Since her molecules were split

And before

Since we crucified her Myth,

Now is HerStorm

And our alarm.

How long has she waited for our

Confession, our amends?

Where is our shame?

Shall we repent?

Or be drowned in her unceasing rains?

The poet kneels before her Mass

A piece of dust, an ash

While roots are washed

Away from home

As HerGroans

Rumble

Like a fever

breaking

Into the lost summer of our Age

Rumbling

On and on and on

Her holy

holy

rage.

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

"BLUE"

“Blue”

Cotton, metallic threads, pearls, glass beads on antique linen.

Image: 30 inch diameter.

What emerged from a blue time, a pressing-down time and 560 hours of tiny stitches?

Below: Roots and Branches to the skies

Above: Rising Sun

Left: Earth, Fire

Right: Water,, Wind

Doves crying at the moon

Flying doves heralding…

And then,

Les hirondelles , les petite filles d’air—

O swallows, little daughters of the air—

Holding in their beaks pearly omphali

And the new white thread

Circling

Protecting

Containing

Our “blue” planet.

BLUE

Sunday, June 18, 2023

The conflict between the opposites can strain the psyche to the breaking point, if we take them seriously or if they take us seriously…if all goes well the solution, seemingly of its own accord, appears out of nature. Then and then only it is convincing. It is felt as “grace.”

…it represents the result of the joint labors of consciousness and the unconscious and attains the likeness of the God image in the form of the mandala, which is probably the simplest model of a concept of wholeness.

…The clash, which is at first of a purely personal nature, is soon followed by the insight that the subjective conflict is only a single instance of the universal conflict of opposites. Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches of the psyche…

...I am thinking here of the simplest basic form of the mandala, the circle, and the simplest (mental) division of the circle, the quadrant or, as the as may be, the cross.

C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Late Thoughts), pages 335-336.