(325-328) The Lion and the Lizard 325

Active flux.
Now equally balanced,
The year at its brightest,
This element has the greatest light.
It protects the divisions of the Sun's
Brightness and activity.

As I try to explain the ideas behind my work in this contextual piece which accompanies and helps clarify the creative work I have been doing, I am finding that I spend many words talking around my work. I write about the similarities that I find between my ideas concerning art/performance and others' ideas in other disciplines. In this section, the Lion, I am trying to help support and protect the Muse by any means I can find. This is what my Krishna/Lion does. He is constantly aware of His beloved from which new worlds are created through His interaction with Her.

326

The year is lucid within --
As water cleared of weeds.

Man is capable of higher love, which, marrying mind with mind and with the universe, brings forth all that is noblest in his faculties, and lifts him beyond himself. This higher love is neither mortal nor immortal, but a power intermediate between the human and the Divine, filling up the mighty interval, and binding the universe together. He is chief of those celestial emissaries who carry to the gods the prayers of men, and bring down to the men the gifts of the gods. (As Plato says,) "He is forever poor, and far from being beautiful as mankind imagine, for he is squalid and withered; he flies low along the ground, is homeless and unsandled; sleeping without covering before the doors and in the unsheltered streets, and possessing do far the mother's nature as being forever the companion of want. Yet, sharing also that of his father, he is forever scheming to obtain things good and beautiful; he is fearless, vehement, and strong; always devising some new contrivance; strictly cautious and full of inventive resource; a philosopher through his whole existence, a powerful enchanter, and a subtle sophist."
Morals and Dogma, by Albert Pike1

327

There is no contradiction;
The cycle of the year returns to the center.

For me, Krishna/Lion is the god, Love, as well as the maintainer of the cosmos. The cosmos is maintained through his love for the Muse and his work is aided by our love for him as well as the Muse. The artist's work is an expression of a love which holds the universe together. I firmly believe that the artists are doing what the shamans have done in the past. As there are fewer shamans, there will be more artists. The need must and will be filled.

328

The eye looks upwards towards the Heavens;
The ear listens to the abyss below.

The artist seeks awareness of all that is inside the soul as it seems to manifest itself both inwardly and outwardly. The artist then often feels an uncontrollable desire to manifest what was seen internally in an external way so that others might see it also. An artist is often "called" just like many shamans or ministers of a faith. An artist often experiences an internal rebirth which then gives him/her the vision to create. We are all groping around in the dark. That which can be perceived or understood is only a trace of what is. The whole Earth is very large, but it is only an atom compared to the worlds of the imagination and the imagination is just all real as the world. And, beyond the imagination are the worlds of the unknown which maybe hinted at by dreams/music. The brain is a complex organ which, like Indra's cloak, is a complex matrix continually reflecting upon itself. Tying it to the visible would be cutting out 99.9999 . . .% of its potential. It is a creative organ continually making old things new. Or, would it be better to say, making new things to which the old contribute? Societies which are less materialistic than our own make their imaginary, dream, mythical, and/or imaginal worlds a great part of their lives.

Artists in this country are somewhat renounced because art is the least lucrative of all careers. This renunciation often seems involuntary and serves what seems like the pathological needs of the artist. Since artists continually work and develop the images which are in the unconscious of the people, they are the shamans of our society. They are sometime even slaves to their images, their gods. They have learned to surrender, renounce the world, and follow their gods. The world becomes to the artist a mirror which reflects the artist's inner self.

next page.

title page.