Saturday, August 31, 2013

SUSPENDED - "I am half-sick of shadows,"

        said the Lady of Charras


Orchard Apparition

Instead of cats & dogs, it's been raining apples here, just like in Keresley, Coventry - "they fell out of the sky as if out of nowhere, but after all, they've had witches there for centuries."

December 14, 2011- West Midlands, UK

Everyone wishes money would fall from the sky instead of fish, frogs, toads, snakes, worms.  It did once in 1940, Russia -  a 16thc. shower of coins.  In 1969 golf balls fell from the sky on Punta Gorda, Florida.  In 1876 a woman from Kentucky reported meat flakes raining from the sky.  They were tested and found to be venison.  In 1976, San Luis Obispo, Ca., it rained blackbirds and pigeons for two days. 


For more fun facts, I refer you to Charles Hoy Fort's, "The Book of the Damned," published in 1917, considered the first book written in the field of "anomalostics."  He has chapters on "thunderstones", which fell from the sky during a lighting storm, poltergeists, UFOs, giants and fairy crosses and oh, so much more!


Charles Fort, Prophet of the Unexplained


"A procession of the damned.  By the damned I mean the excluded.  We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded" - opening lines of The Book of the Damned.




Fort didn't give a fig for science, thought of it as a defacto religion.  He compared mainstream or close-minded scientists to religious fundamentalists and thought the "battle" between science and religion simply a smokescreen. 



(You can find it on Project Gutenberg)







Charles explained many strange doings & all manner of falling debris, UFO sightings etc., by a kind of stationary Super-Sargasso Sea, where all things lost on earth mysteriously turn up, occasionally to rain down on earth.  I'd believe this theory more readily if ever there had been a biblical rain of "socks". It  hasn't happened yet

Back to the Falling Apples - I decided to take a bite:

This one was like carved "applewood"
 
This one was poisoned - Jim De Lillo

                      
Scent Wise - Donderdag

I fell into a deep sleep...

 And woke up in The Tower, late 19th c.
                           
La Tour - Chateau de Charras
J.W. Waterhouse, Lady of Shalot, 1894
"Four gray walls and four gray towers overlook a space of flowers and the silent isle imbowers the Lady of Shalott."

Lord Alfred Tennyson



  
                                                                                                                                        
And moving thro' a mirror clear
that hangs before her all the year,                                                   
Lady of Shalott - Panifilth
shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
there the river eddy whirls,
and there the surly village churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls
Pass onward from Shalott. 




"She left the web, she left the loom,                        
She made three paces thro' the room,                                      
She saw the helmet and the plume,                                         
She look'd down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon  me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.

Cracked Ballroom Mirrors - scene from Polanski's "Vampires" - William Dudley

J.W. Waterhouse, 1888 - The Lady of Shalott - Art Everywhere UK Aug. 2013

And down the river's dim expanse-
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

J.A. Grimshaw - Lady of Shalott - 1878

Lady of Shalott, who is this? and what is here? Sayers & Lundgren

Could this be Sir Lancelot?

Here is Belladonna, The Lady of the Rocks, the Lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see.  I do not find
The Hanged Man.  Fear death by water.                      
 --T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

                                                                                    
Francesca Woodman - Hanging Woman

Yes, "fear death by water" -- Ellen Lorenzi-Prince's XII Hanged One,
Tiamat, Babylonian Goddess of the Deep & her unusual take on the card:
"What has been lost, lives in hidden places."

www.darkgoddesstarot.com - Published by Arnell's Art - www.arnellart.com
78 female figures of magic, mystery, sex & death, sovereignty & shadow-


Ellen Lorenzi-Prince, Dark Goddess Tarot
                                                                
Hanged Man - Marseille Deck
Hanged Man - 20th c. Unknown artist
         
                                         
 Pendu (Suspendu) - Hung, Suspended, from the verb "Pendre"

The Hanged Man XII - also known as the Spirit of Mighty Waters.  He's Odin who hung himself from the World Tree in order to seek out knowledge from within the Tarot cards.  The lessons cannot be learned from the physical world alone, only by tuning in to the inner voice.  Yielding, meditation, sacrifice, surrender, a lack of struggle, suspending expectations, REFLECTION.  What the Indians call "walking the land of I don't know."  You can see he is smiling. We gain a fresh perspective by hanging upside down, suspended between physical and spiritual worlds. It enables us to see the world in a different light. What fun! like being a child on the monkey bars.

When the HM appears it may indicate there is a sacrifice to be made, but by giving up one thing we may gain something greater.  Perhaps we give up a clinging illusion to find a greater truth. Or we let go of trying to control the world around us in exchange for a little more trust in ourselves, those around us and All That Is.   

Memorial Fountain - Bordeaux

What do I do when my love is away?
(does it worry you to be alone)
How do I feel by the end of the day?
(are you sad because you're on your own)
No, I get by with a little help from my friends*
Mmm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mmm, I'm gonna try with a little help from my friends

John Lennon - ringtone
Back of Chateau early morning

Back of Chateau at Dusk

And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
   --T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land


*for LOM

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