Living Earth Alchemy Research Project

On May 8th, 2003 I received an email from a gentleman who was launching a new line of essences in Norway. After Lars-Moe Roger had seen the calendar images he described the difference between tap water watercolors and essences water watercolors as difficult to put into words. “ The pictures, he said, shine more, they were more alive.”
He requested I paint with five of his research essences that he had channeled for me personally. Little did I understand the significance of these channeled essences. There isn’t even the idea that an entity on earth participated in creating them as would be the case with flower or mineral essences.
In essence work there is an overwhelming impulse to measure the effect, but once you have worked with and felt the effects of the essences you get over that and understand that this work is not measurable within our limited scope as humans today, but there is something here that is rock bottom solid.

More information at 
livingearthalchemy.com

Alaskan Flower Essence
2002
Crystal Radiance
2003
Living Earth Alchemy
2003
Keeping Time
2004-2008
Other Artwork
Klamath River: "Final Warning"
IMAGE 1: Dragon Research Project
   Dragon Essence: I smelled the serpent!

There is a knowing that once you accept it, you will know that your perceptions are correct and it feels true. It is trusting your instincts. This is the ultimate work of the essences, to balance the soul with the intellect.

The Wingate Riffle is a canyon of anceint rocks that look like a serpent’s back as the river weaves its way down to the sea. The Upper Klamath River is very deep there with lots of little eddies to swirl you around in the current. The sun barely ever shines into the canyon water making it a deep green color always.

Perched on these rocks, I was painting fast and furiously to try and catch the morning light as it lit up the mountain across the way. My mind was focused on my work when suddenly I smelled something I had never smelled before. I quickly raised my head and sniffed fully into the air to register the smell in my brain. It was ancient, almost putrefied…. Old and weary, yet I got a real sense that it was only in a resting mode to get ready for a final furious battle.

The serpent had come up to check my work, and me, out. I sensed that we received a begrudged approval. It felt sort of like a “hump” of I did not think I would like it, but go ahead and continue, we’ll see.

If you understand the history of the State of Jefferson, you will understand the “hump”. This area of the Klamath has had its share of betrayal. The Great Seal
of the State of Jefferson was created out of a gold pan with two XX’s painted on the bottom, symbolic of the area’s having been double- crossed by Salem and Sacramento. October 1941 was the day of purposed secession from the State of California due to over mining and residents fed up with their roads.

In the drought year of 2001 in California the Klamath River”s flow below Iron Gate was slashed to about half of the recommended level for a healthy fish producing river. 33,000 fish, littered the river’s last 36 miles , becoming one of the largest fish kills ever recorded in the United States, largely due to betrayal by Salem and Sacramento.

 

Klamath River: "Final Warning"

This painting serves as a symbol, for the River, as a “final warning” to respect it’s right to live a healthy life without service to others until it is destroyed. Both of the American Indian Tribes that live on the Upper and the Lower Klamath have legends of the serpent who lives in the river.

Yesterday, I double-crossed myself with the dragon. I needed to clarify the diamonds on the rattle so I decided to use tracing paper and borrow design from a photo of another rattler that was more defined. I worked on the drawing all morning, getting it just right to transfer. Then I proceed to undo the whole process by penciling over the whole piece on the WRONG SIDE. I completely obliterated the pencil marks I needed to retrace again on the original. I blamed the snake for awhile. Then I took up the pencil and a fresh sheet of tracing paper and started all over again. This is an important piece. It needs to be done and it needs to be exacting and to the point. This is dragon work. The work no one else will put out.

Dragons are the protectors of the horde, the treasure. They have a lonely existence and when they do have visitors they are usually there to kill or steal.

Dragons also represent the good fortune of the east as they bring in the New Year. Painting with Dragon Essence has been a real joy.

IMAGE 2: Dragon Research Project

So far the colors have been bright and very responsive. The pigment and Dragon essence water actually raised shining fibers on the paper giving it a soft, fur look , like cat hair tips.

Working with the dragon essence has been one of the finest experiences I have had to date with an essence. They are all sublime but this one pushed me over top. both in the painting and in my personal life. Dragon offers no judgement, just fact. It exemplifies the true, unvarnished but kind.

It also offers you support when you use it and begin making these disconcerting truths. I started working on “Final Warning” in late August of 2003 and finished it January 31, 2004. All the while I was taking Dragon Essence daily. Everyday, in every way I keep feeling more and more grounded in my uniqueness and presence of mind. Fear and looking for acceptance took a second seat. I was able to be very present in the moment, living and speaking my mature personal truth. Clearing out the cobwebs and deadwood all the while standing firm. I feel refreshed. I will miss the Dragon.

 

May 1, 2004
Huldra


Norwegian Folk Lore The Huldra is a mysterious and tricky creature, and is considered to be a part of the troll family. She is fair-haired and beautiful and had it not been for her cow’s tail, she would look like an ordinary girl if not exceptionally beautiful. Occasionally she tries to hide her tail in order to lure young human men into marrying her. Once the man agrees to the marriage, and they are married in a church, the huldra’s tail falls off, but the true nature of the troll remains in the huldra. If the man doesn’t treat her well, she will turn incredibly ugly, and the man will suffer and regret being tricked by a huldra throughout his marriage.


Personal Singles Ad in a local paper
“ Wanted, a woman sexy beyond belief! When men look at her their mouths will gape and their tongues will fall out.
When she enters a room men will stare and other women will curse her under their breath.”

A male, licensed marriage and family therapist said, “ Becoming a naval officer was a very important symbol of manhood for me. Another was to allow myself to feel only two feelings – either of anger or sexual desire – because all other emotions were feminine and therefore weak and to be abhorred."

Another man in a restaurant talks about the waitress to his friend. “ I’d love to paint her.” he said it with devout desire, not with the desire for sexual conquest but for a full creative engagement with beauty and intimacy.

These sentiments are the blessings and enemies of women trying to achieve identity within the sum of their parts. It is the search for their own authenticity – core self that embodies the values and loyalties for which they stand when the false self is confronted. Beauty fades but the soul goes on forever, which frees a women from all form and no substance to a humanized soul free from bondage to fear and hope. The warrior consciousness and the eternal being are developed. If the legend of the Huldra is one of sexual prediction and seduction what does that say about the seduced? Who makes the final choice? Is it the seducer or the seduced? Why are women always the vessel for blame? The Huldra archetype challenges both men and women to examine their motivation and intent.

Huldra’s cow tail dropping off after she has seduced the unsuspecting man into marriage is a metaphor for men feeling castrated or unmanly with the loss of the bachelor’s virility after committing to the monogamy of marriage. He is no longer the stud sowing his oats in any receiving field. Being married can be a metaphor for being a symbolic eunuch trapped in a life of servitude to your bride and family often without all of the sex and love making that was wished for or expected. This reflects the opposites in human nature.

In this age of anxiety a major psychoanalytic dilemma has been women being a seductive, alluring temptress and a castrating virgin at the same time. Women communicate an impression of being unnerved, even vulnerable, yet there is the notion of women or of eroticism as frightening. Lovemaking and climax have often been referred to as the little murderers or little deaths in Europe. The woman is the vessel for this phenomenon. In the same act she institutes life and death.

These words are often spoken with regard to rape or incest “She deserved it. Everything about her made me want her.” If you are perceived as attractive men think you must want them. It is kind of a justification for the uncontrolled desire of the penis. Then it becomes the women’s shame. “ You have shamed the family.” There is no truth telling, as the female becomes the predator instead of the victim. Her throat is sealed off in the shame that is sealed with the secrets of patriarchal opposition and oppression.

A contention can be made that all evil stems from man’s constant effort to hide his animal nature. He tried to hide it with clothing, with abstract ideas, with
religions, with plastic and metal extensions of his ego. To admit he is an animal, with sexual and excretory functions of an animal, would be to admit that he would one-day die. Death is the unspeakable secret underlying censorship and repression. The deniers of life, the censors of art, the repressors of sex- they are the same ones who support wars, applaud violence, clamor for executions and walk and talk in fear. Fear has already killed them, the fear of showing pain or pleasure, the fear of exhibiting anything to the world but a buttoned-down, plasticized facade of unfeeling self-containment. It is easy to turn the machine guns on their fellow creatures, because they see themselves and their fellow creatures as odorless, sexless, plastic manikins, mere embodiments of a variety of abstractions. What ever unsettles this view must be suppressed.

There is a sense of enormous power of inner rage. Many women feel angry at the denial of woman’s power that seems essential to most religious groups. There is a denial of her body and the great mystery of conception and birth that became the miracle of the fathers in the immaculate conception. They are angry that men shun, yet long for their breasts and bellies. This is a tragic assault to the soul dignity of women through exploitation and commercialization of female sexuality. Modern women especially absorb media images and other stereotypes of dehumanizing sexuality. Sexual-humiliation for entertainment is abhorrent yet there is several television shows and movies based on just this. Why are they popular and tolerated? Charlie Chaplin said in the movie The Kid, “ The woman, whose only sin is motherhood.”

Huldra is the radiant darkness behind the light. She breaks through the conditioned beliefs to help you discover your own female animal wildness. Your savage wildness is perfected. In serenity she will wait through the gestational period of your self-discovery and support your efforts. Every woman has her fatal flaws, such as the huldra’s cow tail. However, that is designed to make her clever, adaptable, directed, and set her eye on the goal. She teaches you to see things in a larger scope and in silent gestation. Great distances seem to separate the male and the female. But we are all one with an etheric patterning for each expression.

This led me to the Caduceus and ultimately to the concept of unconditional love. The kind of love where you do not have to receive love back to be able to give love. It is a mother’s love, but not exclusively. We all have access to it. The Caduceus represents a bridge between the masculine and feminine and the eternal play of opposites they represent. At one level this play can be seen operating as sexuality, at another as political process, at another as the emerging of consciousness beyond polarity, time and space, when the divine awakens in the human heart. Then the shape shifting but predictable cycle of the caduceus embraces the paradox of continuity within change. The human bodies DNA strands and the Charka system have the same patterning. The winged staff of Mercury represents the simultaneous ascent and descent of the channel of connection, which abstracts the nature of universal energies. These energies have the power to unify the masculine and the feminine, the body and the spirit, they become a healing force and teaching element. Huldra embodies the reconciliation in an objective fashion, which enables the couple to see through the blockages of imprinted behavior of the previous male and female generations. This interaction creates a spiraling process of transformation, into clarity, essence and realization, until a state is born beyond duality. This is why women and men who recognize this seek each other at all costs when their connection is clear and remain together for a lifetime or more.

Dr. Nelson Soucasaux, a Brazilian gynecologist has written a book on the symmetric patterns in the female genitals called The female sex organs: Shape, Function, Symbol and Archetype. He calls attention to the existence of beautiful, perfect and very curious symmetric patterns in the woman’s sexual organs. From a metaphysical point of view these patterns seem to reflect fundamental principals and laws of nature and existed not only in the uterus but also in the entire female genitalia. It may constitute more indication of the existence of something more transcendental energetically.
The main pattern of symmetry is known as the axial symmetry, which is recognized as the longitudinal middle line of the body seen at the antero-posterior position. In women, this straight longitudinal line coincides exactly with the uterus and the vagina. The way through which the myometrial smooth muscle fibers are arranged along the uterus gives rise to a double spiral system of “lines of force” that symmetrically entwine and embrace themselves around the uterine cavity. Each one of the myometrial muscles originating in the Fallopian tubes and greatly facilitates the propagation of the contractile waves along the uterus. The uterus has a structural organization characterized by a virtual cavity the shape of a downward pointed triangle surrounded by double descending spiral of muscle fibers symmetrically entwined, forming a perfect system of “ lines of force.”

These lines of force are also associated with magnetic field lines as introduced by Michael Faraday. Faraday, felt that space containing magnetic “ lines of force” was no longer empty but acquired certain physical properties. Faraday’s colleague James Clerk Maxwell, fleshed out these ideas with equations that are the cornerstone of electromagnetic theory.

The Earth’s magnetic field portrays a symmetrical hemisphere towards the Sun that deflects the Solar Wind around the Earth. At both poles there is a cusp that exists due to the magnetic lines of force. Mother Earth’s ancient energies are said to contain ley lines that are best described as invisible lines of power in the earth. Ley Lines were re-discovered by Alfred Watkins in the 1920’s, who associated them with the Roman God Mercury, the winged messenger whose staff is the symbol for caduceus.

For these reasons I have chosen to paint my first abstract vibrational watercolor. The two symbols of the myometrial fibers and the caduceus intertwined epitomize the Huldra essence.

 

Hawk Wing
August 2004

Every one says that Hawk is the Messenger but I say it is the Over View.
I don’t discount the Messenger in the Hawk but say it is much more than that.
Look at the larger picture, then narrow down your focus to pin point. The hawk essences can narrow the issue down to the most minute particle and detail.

Hawk helps you to overcome fear by reducing the monster before you. It helps you to have the courage of conviction and enforcement. Many people believe very strongly in a lot of things but few have the courage to enforce their beliefs.

As always, when I work with an essence, the very vibration of it begins to come to me. There is a juvenile Red Tail hawk in our Valley in Stone Lagoon at McDonald Creek. He has been crying and crying all week because he is hungry and afraid to fly. His father and mother were with him all spring but now it is summer and he must learn to fly and hunt on his own. He flaps from Sitka Spruce to Sitka Spruce, crying all the way. When he actually makes it he cries and cries for his mother to feed him as she pushes him up and down the valley like a sailboat that is tacking back and forth. Up and down they go after long periods of Sitka sitting and screeching in between. What a baby!

Tuesday, he was flying on his own with his mother, she soared, and he flapped. But he was on his own and way up high. Yesterday-he soared with his mother.

A week later he is on his own completely, except for a rare occasional mid morning visit from his mother. He is doing well and becoming full of confidence.

Where I am painting is called Hidden Valley. It is off of Indianola Road and is indeed a Hidden Valley. There are camels, lamas, miniature ponies, EMU’s, long horned steers and the regular assorted ranch animals like horses. It is an enchanted place full of Indian folklore. The valley opens up to a panoramic landscape reaching from the Arcata Bay of Humboldt to Old Town and on into Mrytle Avenue. It incompasses all of Humboldt North Bay. Because it is the Ocean and a Bay the atmosphere is volatile. In the summer, as the marine layer pulls in at evening time, the clouds cover the top part of the sky in a heavy gray.
The fog in the lower sky is still a thin line out at the horizon waiting to come in. The middle of the sky opens up to let in the last of the sun’s rays, because the water in the bay has heated all day and now parts the sky. The golden rays of light spread over the whole landscape like a soaring hawk.


Every day, when I arrive to paint, three Ospreys take off from the old Sitka Snag that grows on the historic Indian mound. Today three white egrets flew over, around and out to the bay as if they had to pause and critique my work. The Osprey stay gone until about 8:00 p.m. when I pack up to go home for the evening. Sometimes one will soar in around 7:00 p.m. to check out the progress. Since the airport is there, all of the little airplanes fly in before dark in a matched approach pattern with the Osprey.

The Hawk essence is very slow in making the decision to act. However, make no mistake, once that decision is made retribution is swift. The mind circles and circles over the target area again and again, observing from all possible angles and points of view. That is why this landscape struck me immediately upon seeing it as the perfect place for the expression of the Hawk Essence.

The Hawk is about focusing in as compared to the Owl Essence, which is about focusing out, like looking through the wrong end of the opera glasses. There is something about cinnamon brown and honey gold with the hawk. The essence invokes these as rich, sweet, mellow reminders of the soaring hawk reflecting in the sun’s rays. I wanted to wrap my senses and myself in it somehow.
The black sinister side of instant death is also apparent with Hawk essence. From ecstasy to death in a single swift approach of it’s fierce claw.
Least ye forget, it is a predator.

 

Owl
October 14, 2004
There is a deep sadness in knowing.

Being an owl, and knowing, seeing is most difficult. Especially difficult when it falls on deaf ears.

Seekers always asking for advice from the wise ol ’owl but never really wanting to hear what she knows, sees, hears and speaks. Ageless Wonder, a delicate balance holds the owl essence.

At the 14th Annual Northern California Women’s Herbal Symposium in September 2004, I fell in love with some organic, handmade hemp paper used for this depiction. I found a new pigment color called Minnesota pipestone. The color reminded me of the plume of Pampas grass when it blooms in the fall. This pigment is made from the sacred stone used for the peace pipes of the Plains Indians. Jet black India ink and iridescent watercolor are the hallmarks of this elegant night bird of prey. Silent feathers on the wings allow the owl to hunt without being detected. The owl essence is barely audible yet shouts her discretion.

Working in natural light, no electric lamps seemed appropriate; to work in much lower light that my sun dome provided in my north-facing studio.

The Owl is all encompassing. Any thought you wish to direct to it will be addressed. Soft silent knowledge of the dark. The owl is an extension of Huldra
in that owl knows the energy lines of constant change that stays the same.

The Owl is the wizard’s choice for good reason. The wizard relies on the owl’s ability to view focused out like a pair of opera glasses reversed. She offers you wisdom and discernment to see the whole picture, the total truth, and how it fits together. Acceptance is the hallmark of vibrational essence work. You are faced with information you may not want to know but with essence work that awareness, acceptance and resignation to alter behavior, attitude and responsibility is the “ CURE”.

Winter 2004
Wolverine
I keenly feel the wolverine of winter stalking. It is the grand design of the winter solstice to get one to that place of review. Wolverine essence represents a place to be isolated in order to understand your thoughts and assimilate your wounds or hurt feelings. The wolverine is an isolated loner who is always ready to be fierce. It is representational of the warrior archetype. Because the warrior is alone, they only have themselves to protect their lives. This fierceness is freedom of having nothing left to lose.

Mother Jones, the labor union organizer, was sentenced to twenty years in prison at eighty years old, as the most dangerous women in the United States because she faced down the opposition. She was quoted as saying “ When you have nothing to lose and you put your mind to doing something-you can be fierce in your energy.”

Wolverine supports your ability to see clearly into any situation and defend your position. Be it emotional, mental or physical, you can stand up for your self and hold the line. But fierceness alone is not enough. Leo the Lion was the fiercest lion in the world. According to Greek Mythology, no weapons would wound him. However, Hercules solved that problem by choking the life out of him.

The fierceness that comes with nothing left to lose is also know as Satori in Japan. It is a term for the experience of enlightenment through surrender.
It is considered to be the greatest degree of freedom. The mind is opened, the true nature of the self is revealed, realized and hence, the nature of all existence is awakened. The key to Satori is acceptance. The people experiencing a sudden raised consciousness during wartime accept their position. They accept it and resign themselves to it. It is then that everything - and their place in it – become clear.

The second discovery about the nature of the Wolverine essence is that it takes you to the “ Land of the Lost and Lonely.” Humboldt County, California is much like that. John Steinbeck wrote of his two-day stay under the redwood trees at sixty, “ At night, the darkness is black – only straight up a patch of gray and an occasional star. And there’s a breathing in the black for these huge things that control the day and inhabit the night are living things and have presence, and perhaps feeling, and somewhere in deep-down perception perhaps communication. I have a life long association with these things. (Odd that the word “trees” does not apply.) I can accept them and their power and their age because I was early exposed to them. On the other hand, people lacking such experience begin to have a feeling of uneasiness here, of danger, of being shut in, enclosed and overwhelmed. It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them.”

The Redwood forests of Humboldt are desolate like a desert. Only it’s desolation comes as mists of gray, damp fog that penetrates the skin to the bones.

Ulysses S. Grant, the eighteenth President of the United States, was a captain in the Union Army when he was stationed at Fort Humboldt. He was quoted in a letter to his wife as saying, “ I get so tired and out of patience with the loneliness of this place that I feel like volunteering for the first service that offers.”

Winter tree limbs with no leaves show only the tight, tight buds clinging to the branch of spring’s promise. The winter storms in the night of emotional deprivation can only be staved off by self-love. It is your only refuge in the testing ground of the wolverine place. Wolverine offers support for those suffering from emotional deprivation by helping them embrace and navigate through it into clarity and enlightenment. It is the correct light of Satori. One learns not to just accept the social, fear-based status quo so they do not upset the situation or people involved. They must resign themselves to the reality of the true situation in spite of the pain of discovery. That breaking snap of the winter twig in the howling winds. There is no more fooling oneself about the truth. One must surrender and accept the truth they find there. Staring into the abyss as the observer you must draw on inner strength and self-love, forsaking those who have forsaken you.


Alaskan Flower Essence
2002
Crystal Radiance
2003
Living Earth Alchemy
2003
Keeping Time
2004-2008
Other Artwork


Will do commission work




   
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