Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it depends on

Hail, child of fair-faced Semele! He who forgets you can in no wise order sweet song.

the arts that have influenced us....

~Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination. . .
   ~John Keats

The work of the poet comes to meet the spiritual need of the society in which he lives, and for this reason his work means more to him than his personal fate, whether he is aware of this or not. ~C.G. Jung

I would say myself that there is no real contradiction between art, conceived as design, and the unconscious. The unconscious does, in fact, reveal design. Not only is the dream, when understood, a dramatic unity, but even in its plastic manifestations the unconscious possesses a principle of organization.
~Sir Herbert Read, Collected Essays in Literary Criticism

 

Welcome to Deborah's website

 

entrees:

orts and slarts:

à la carte (other vendors)

 

 

the world
is the theater
of the periodic revolution of soul.

angry kittens     (just to make sure we are awake)

 

". . . .Then, what could love be?' I asked. 'A mortal?'

. . . . 'He's like we mentioned before,' she said. 'He is in between mortal and immortal.'

'What do you mean, Diotima?'

'He's a spirit, Socrates. Everything spiritual, you see, is in between god and mortal.'

'What is their function?' I asked.

'They are messengers. . . . ' "~Plato, Symposium

 

The synoptic function of the myth whose circular structure duplicates that of the cosmos enables it to integrate in one vision the manifold experiences acquired by men through contact with things. As in a theater the representation of the invisible takes shape and puts rhythm into space. At the center of the enclosure built on a hill and opened to the outer world, the drama that holds together the lives of men with the lives of gods, as well as the forces of heaven with those of the earth, enacts the meeting point of all the perspectives to which it communicates its primal unity.
~ Jean-Francois Matte'i

 

We call ourselves a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of any single thing. We have forgotten that Water can cleanse, and Fire purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all. . .Still, I am conscious that behind all this Beauty, satisfying though it be, there is some Spirit hidden of which the painted forms and shapes are but modes of manifestation, and  it is with this Spirit that I desire to become in harmony. 

~Oscar Wilde
 (De Profundis, 509 in Letters vol. I)

"In a living portraiture, the motive forces of evolution do not reside solely in the artist; for there is an intimate contact between the portrayer and the portrayed."
~Aby Warburg

PreRaphaelite paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti & the PRB

Look upon your heart

 

 

The bigger the crowd,
the more negligible the individual.~CGJung


No one can flatter himself that he is immune to the spirit of his own epoch, or even that he possesses a full understanding of it. Irrespective of our conscious convictions, each one of us, without exception, being a particle of the general mass, is somewhere attached to, colored by, or even undermined by the spirit which goes through the mass. Freedom stretches only as far as the limits of our consciousness. ~CGJung

Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche. Just as the human body connects us with the mammals and displays numerous relics of earlier evolutionary stages going back to even the reptilian age, so the human psyche is likewise a product of evolution which, when followed up to its origins, show countless archaic traits. ~CGJung

We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science.~CGJung

Just as man as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors. ~CGJung


If you don't read Jung, wikiquote has some basics. From there, read him directly, whole, with an awareness of his own evolution. Step back into who you are.

Hail, child of fair-faced Semele! He who forgets you can in no wise order sweet song.

 

 

 

from Traditions of Magic in Late Antiquity Recipe-Books:

Great heavenly one who turns the universe, the God who is, Iaô, Lord, ruler of all, ablanathalaabla, grant, grant me favor. I shall have the name of the great God in this amulet; and protect me from every evil thing, me whom Jacqueline bore, Charles begot.

see also:  | Amulets and Gems | Babylonian Demon Bowls | Aggressive Magic
Introduction | Acknowledgements | Abbreviations | Further Reading

 

 

all pages in muse  ©  deborah