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Summoning
the Great Goddess to the Aid of Her Earth Daughters
11 X 15
watercolor, 1984
spiritual trailblazers
the story of
this painting
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. . . a Sakta
worshipper of the Goddess Gauri
elaborates the
biform image of the goddess holding within her body
the dread intensity
of the moonless night and the brilliance of the rising Sun.
Pupul Jayakar(1)
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The
Story of this Painting
A mother lioness
protecting her cub, ferocious, every hair standing on end, waiting.
Someone you love is hurting and they're half way around the world.
All I could do was pace and pant. Focusing my mind and breath, trying
to see, to dream her reality, I realize my only offering is to paint,
to create a circle of protection and place her in it. Kneeling, becoming
the great mother of the night universe, I summon with my whole strength
the wisdom to see the situation clearly. The matrikas arise before
me, anthropomorphic embodiments of the seed syllables from which woman
and form are born. This story and creation myth are sacred to the
ground of mother India who had supported my recent journey.
There she is in
the tree. Always I seem to place those in need of healing and protection
in a tree. Strange perhaps, but even now in this distant place I softly
remembered the park that was my world as a child. The trees were unique
magnificent beings that held me in their upturned arms when no one
else would. They stood gracefully poised to dance and sway in the
wind, sending sweet warm aromatic caresses to sooth my brow. White
bark, peeling black, rough, gummy, leaves, needles, my tactile capacity
went wild. Cotton pods, cones, winged seeds spinning to the ground
every season wonder and awe expanded my universe, my understanding.
Spread eagle on the ground, my eyes tried to pierce the fragrant earth
mysteries that the trees roots knew intimately, like they tried now
to see into the unknown vistas of another's heart.
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Why
should we two ever want to part?
Just as the leaf
of the water rhubarb lives floating on the water.
We live as the
great one and the little one.
As the owl opens
his eyes all night to the moon,
we live on as
the great one and little one.
This love between
us goes back to the first
humans;
it cannot be annihilated.
Here is Kabir's
idea: as the river gives itself
into the ocean,
what is inside
me moves inside you.
Kabir(2)
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1.
Jayakar, The Earthen Drum, p. 228
2.
Kabir, The Kabir Book, p.56
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