BLADES

The sorceress can file a claim for herself. She is this and she is that. With the grace of a Wudang warrior she gazes into the cauldron: All appearance. In reality she is nothingness hiding in someone’s soul.

SEQUOIA

The sequoia angel is tough and soft. Reddish and warm like a Viking’s beard. The sequoia angel has a head full of mantras. The sequoia angel has roots in the thermal source. The one Hercules blessed. We meet in the underground, the angel and I. But first we have to pass through the guardian of the woods. The one with a strong chin and a sulking face. The maidens that never grow old serve him. ‘The gift of nature,’ he says, ‘is the greatest gift. Don’t waste your time looking for presents. Give earth to the earth, and ashes to ashes. Make symmetry flow and smell the green path. And listen. Wherever you go I go.’

La Multi Ani, Bent, from Herculane, the source of many things.

BLACK AND WHITE

The brown spot in the middle of the white block below is where I live. What makes the brown spot is the blinds. All solid wood and custom made. When I moved in and said, 'I need my house in the woods', the neighbours were all looking with suspicion. It helps that I come from Romania where everyone is crazy, so I'm allowed to be crazy. The neighbours all went for the black and white aesthetics. People are so civilized in Denmark. No trace of gypsyhood or some other dubious ethnicity is welcome. The interior must be white and black in a Danish home - more often than not anyhow - or some white and some black, or some black lines framing some personally taken black and white photography. The black and white is an individual expression. If you have books, it's better that they are in the basement, or else they ruin the black and white fashion. Black plastic is popular too. Mainly because it can be mistaken for wood. 'Only rich asholes can afford real wood,' some Danes conjecture, 'or the gypsies who have no sense of culture and color.' 'Look at that circus,' the Danes go, when spotting shades of black approaching some occult manifestation when red and purple is also in the vicinity. Most of my neighbours in my block sport white, flimsy ribbon-like shredding over their windows. I've started noticing all this from the distance especially since I've started walking the dog. It's amazing how much culture you get to see while another creature is taking a pee. I can see how my brown concoction for the big windows rather ruins the uniformity of the Danish landscape. I feel guilty for bringing my house in the woods in an apartment, and in such a clandestine way. I can feel how the black and white individuality and sign of good taste envelops me, and when my neighbour across from my apartment flings her door open just as I turn the key into my keyhole, I realize fully how mistaken I am about my ways. An army of children come out of her place and with her door swung wide open a sea of black and white lines is about to swallow me. But the dog saves me: Ah, the sweet sound of redemption. 'Giddy, giddy, doggy, doggy. Such lovely black and white wolfie.' Yes. I knew I could get it right. Yes. 23 years in Denmark have not gone in vain. Thank you thank you. I now know everything. Thank you black and white culture. How very exciting to be here.

THE THING ITSELF

For Anthony Johnson

Good Friday begins with the dog, first jumping on the bed for the ritual morning kiss and then with stepping outside on the porch. It snows and it freezes. But we are both naked on the porch. The tall trees salute us and we salute them. The sun approves of these salutations. The snowflakes envelop our bodies. They melt on my nakedness while the dog’s fur retains them in their full glory; for a moment. We get dressed and have coffee. I get dressed and I have coffee. The dog watches me. She makes a sign towards the woods. ‘Come now, what do you need all these clothes for?’ I tell her that since it’s Good Friday, I have to be decent for church. We step into it. Nature greets us, and we go searching for special branches. We find some with mushrooms on them. Frigg helps me break them into sizable pieces. I find an altar and start preaching: ‘The thing itself…’ Frigg wags her tail and nods. At the sounds of the church bells nearby we decide to pose for a photo shoot. The camera clicks on automatic setting, and we forget what we came here for. Is it a wedding? The thing itself. Not the idea of the thing. The thing itself. Anthony Johnson instructed his people and me on the significance of the thing itself exactly a year ago in Turku. I did the same 3 days ago. I teach, that’s what I do, though not everyone gets it. Anthony said: The alchemical marriage tells us something about the thing itself. But the thing itself is without significance. It’s a portrait of nature with white hair.

SHAMAN'S STAFF

For Daniel Gheorghe 

The full moon after the equinox promises to solve the staff problem. The morning in the fountain lays the tracks for searching. The trees must be down already. Their spirit must await me. The dog leads the way and I feel my hands becoming those of a carpenter’s. Two staffs are found, one migrant one vibrant. The peel comes off easily. The tools are perfect for this, even though this is not a place where I expect to find such things. The job is done after hours of hand-work outside in the winter sun. Time to test the staffs. The Tuva singers Huun-Huur-Tu already spot the staffs’ powers while I finish their smooth surface off with olive oil. The winds gather. The spirit of 40 gathers. The underground answers the shaman’s call after the beat. This is when I notice that the short and thinner staff is heavier than the tall and thicker staff. Spirit work has a different type of gravitas than we normally know of. The staffs are milky and pure, and my thoughts go out to the one who gets it.

ENTRE-ACTES

Entré and dessert. Entre-actes. 9 eggplants thrown into the Romanian zacusca. Don’t ask how many red peppers. Many. Best olive oil following the inner eye. The pineal gland’s apple in the eye made up by Zeus, the Greek finest olive oil – or that's what they claim. Crossing something to the des(s)ert. On a fish marinade's back. Then to the Romanian many divine names, ‘cozonac cu nuca,’ the walnut cake, the muse. The whole 900 grams of walnuts crush your palate into a sublime ‘everything is as it should be.’ Everything. When La Déesse gets cooking, all the fools that go through her without getting it are doomed to walking in the rain. A soft rain that will never let go.

IN CITE

New book. A few of you out there have been anticipating it. I hope you enjoy it. If not all of it, then at least some. It has its moments, I can say, since I wrote it myself. The readers have also had good things to say about it. A grand thanks especially to Patrick Blackburn for a very thorough review. Not even a a comma was left unturned. And then there's that compliment, featured also on the back cover. Oh, well, it really can't get any better. It goes to show: some logicians do get the whole thing and then some.

Here's the editorial text and the man's words:

The epistemic creative writer is not merely an expressive writer, a writer who writes for creative writing programs at diverse university colleges. Rather, the epistemic creative writer is the writer who understands that in order to say something useful you must step out of the space that engages your ego. Awareness of what really matters comes from the contemplation of the futility of words. Before the word there is silence. After the word there is silence. But during the word there is knowledge that can be made crystal clear. This book is about extracting what writing means to a few writers who formulate ideas about creative writing without, however, making claims to instruction. Can creative writing that produces knowledge be taught without a method? Samuel Beckett, Raymond Federman, Gertrude Stein, Jacques Lacan, Frank O'Hara, Douglas Hofstadter, Brian Rotman, Herman Melville, Kathy Acker, Friedrich Nietzsche, David Markson, Andrei Codrescu, and a host of others, gather here to offer an answer.

"Camelia Elias speaks to the reader from that place where the language of the birds becomes the language of silence." (Patrick Blackburn, Professor of Formal Logic, Roskilde University)

EyeCorner Press (March 11, 2013) ISBN: 978-8792633330

BUY FROM AMAZON  US  UK

ROSEBUD

‎8th of March. A day of new realizations. I go to the bathroom. I pull down my panties. I read the label: Cecilia Classics. It occurs to me that I've been wearing these panties for 10 years now, and not once did I see that before. WOW. Saint Cecilia's spirit has been upon me all these years and I never knew it! I decide that it must be the rosebud in the sublime Chardonnay Naledi that enabled this epiphany. Galileo was right: "wine is sunlight held together by water." Enjoy your women's day.

THEORBO

While listening to one of my favorite instruments, the theorbo, I’m thinking about great calls to a vocation, or to do something, and what happens when these calls get misinterpreted, and thus missed. Hearing the call but not heeding attention can turn the sound into a howling to the moon. Whatever new start after that is bound to carry with it some of the initial resonance, just enough to keep the one who recognizes the call caught up in the illusion of having done something without actually having done anything. It occurs to me that most of the music composed for the theorbo has a resonance intended for traitors. How do I know this? Just listen to the strings, and you will hear the steps of the one retreating. The treachery of men. The treachery of women. The(orbo). The blind.

 

TAROT GOES ACADEMIC

About a year ago I was eating oysters with K. Frank Jensen, a collector and historian of playing cards and oracle cards. Frank had just backed out of a potential deal to bequest his collection of tarot cards to a big tarot organization. ‘No money should be involved. No commercialization of cards. Only research,’ he said. ‘How about Roskilde University Library?’ I asked, in an attempt to offer a solution to a seemingly impossible task: To offer an institution, for the purpose of research, what is considered the largest and most significant collection of Tarot cards (and more) in the world decreeing that the institution is not to make money off knowledge. ‘Asking around costs nothing,’ I said to Frank, to which he replied: ‘then do it.’ First I met with Martin Bayer, the head of my department, the Institute of Culture and Identity, where I myself research into American studies, particularly esoteric, sacred and secret texts, Tarot as cultural text, and divination as a cultural praxis. ‘Tarot cards?’, asked Martin, ‘what’s that?’ I took my tarot pack from my purse – one which I always have with me, a French deck made by master cartier Jean Noblet in 1650 – I laid 3 cards on the table, and showed him. ‘Whoa,’ Martin said, ‘this is quite amazing.’ Indeed it is, I said. What I have here, in these 3 cards, is not only an answer to your question, but also history. You find in a tarot pack everything, from divination to art history, philosophy, hermetic philosophy, culture, high and low, occultism, semiotics and science; all the things we do in our department. ‘Let’s do it,’ Martin said. ‘Let’s have this gold mine in the house, and take it from there.’ With the Rector’s blessing, we proceeded to convince the Library of the value of such a collection for research.

On December 21 Frank signed the bequest papers, and his collection now belongs to the university. At the signing of the document, Frank brought a few rare decks and books, among them a Mayan Tarot pack. We all liked the idea that what the Mayans predicted was for us a very good omen, namely, not the end of the world on December 21st 2012, as popular belief had it, but the shift to a new consciousness represented by a new sun, new knowledge and new illumination. What we all hope now is that students and researchers, both at Roskilde University and worldwide, will soon discover what a gift Frank made.

The collection is set up under the name of K. Frank Jensen Collection, and it has a board consisting of 4 members. I had the honor of being appointed by Martin Bayer as the president of the collection, and now I look forward to collaborating on future research projects with all interested. I’m already planning our first Tarot conference due to take place this year, and which will mark the opening of the collection. Reputed scholars of Tarot have already been invited, and we look forward to honoring Frank’s request for ‘No money. Only knowledge.’ I see this as a great opportunity for Roskilde University to be as revolutionary as it has always been by promoting research into matters that counter the current discourse about having academics behave like business people.

Diving into situated wisdoms, which is what I call what Tarot cards represent, is a way of promoting self-knowledge in context. Such knowledge is and should be independent of clichés that make us forget what the purpose of higher education is all about: not to make money, not to pretend to make a global impact, not to promote meaningless visibility, but to participate in the creation of a decent human being.

 

SKÅL! § For the Danish version of this story, go to the press release here.

BREED DELIGHT

'Breathe the light,' said the trees at the Roskilde cemetery today. So I did, and my hair got whiter on the spot.

With thanks to my friend, Enrique Enriquez, who sent me the following words upon seeing the above status flung on Facebook and accompanying the above pictures, taken today by the trees themselves in Roskilde at the cemetery. Here is Enrique's comment:

Breathe the light

Breed the light

Breed delight

SYSTEMS OF CORRESPONDENCE

By popular demand here we go again. Cross-link to a fun post on systems of correspondences. The last paragraph reads: "With this cup I take thee to put behind bars. The 6 musketeers will protect your silk. You will love this system." Read the rest on Taro(t)flexions and enjoy!

LENORMAND'S 9 YARDS: FATED OR DOOMED

Inspired by a discussion on how profound an impact we can make on others, I asked the Lenormand cards the following question: what are the elements that go into a most profound touch, and where does it hit the hardest? Without analyzing the whole 9 cards in depth, here’s what I pondered when seeing the first row of three cards. My reflections on these three cards reminded me of how most readers hesitate in the face of what to make of the Cross when aligned with benevolent cards. There are 3 possibilities here: fated relationship, doomed relationship, or a sad affair.

 

We note that at the core of the carré is the Stork. Its cartomantic value is the Queen of Cups. Around it we have a straight-forward theme. To answer the question, we can say that the most profound touch consists of instilling instant love (Heart + Clover), or a perennial love at first sight (Heart + Clover modified by Tree). This has an impact on a spiritual and graceful man, (Cross + Man modified by Lily). As we got the Man card in the spread without asking for it, we could be even more specific and add some more information, fortunetelling style. The man is tall, with a big nose, and dark complexion. He is troubled, of a shifting character, and with a tendency to leave things behind. He is also wealthy. This information is given through the following cards: The Stork gives us clues as to the physical appearance and temperament (long legs and nose, fleeting). The Ship gives us a clue as to his provenance: Africa, the Mediterranean area, or a host of other colonized countries (this includes Canada, and the US). Money-wise, he has his luck with him. His ship comes in. The Cross gives us a clue as to what aches him: the heart.

Now let us go back to the first row and consider the function of the Cross there. The Cross mirroring the Clover tells us that our most profound touch happened at this level: of an extraordinary chance. The incurable melancholic (Cross + Tree) met the love of his life (Heart + Clover + Tree), but due to his belief in what he thinks is an inconstant Queen of Hearts (Cross + Stork) he fails to recognize the significance of a desired long-term commitment (Ring + Ship). One could say that he regrets his involvement (Cross + Ring + Heart). But if you remember, we didn’t start with a question about a particular man whom we can assign agency, and about whom we can say that he is like this or like that, doing this or that, desiring this or that. We wanted to know about the querent’s wish to figure out what her most profound touch consists of and where it hits the hardest.

The final answer to this question must be this: love hits the heart. Whether doomed, fated, or sad, it is for the instant, lucky, extraordinary chance itself to assess to what extent changeability, squeezed between purity and longevity, has any significance at all. When love hits the heart, it moves it. Einstein used to say that ‘nothing happens until something moves,’ and I get the impression that he didn’t refer to our own efforts to push our ship forward, force our luck, and decide that we can just regret what happened and move on. There’s more to the cross than the crossroad.

§ The deck: The Original Lenormand: facsimile reconstruction by Tarot Professionals (Marcus Katz and Tali Goodwin; art direction: Ciro Marchetti), 2012 after the first Lenormand deck by J.K. Hechtel, ca. 1800.

§ For more related cartomancy posts visit my Taro(t)flexions website.

SNOW-SNIFF

That language of trees, the lost leaves finding their breath in fur. We walk in that breath, breathing snow.

MUT(E)ATIONS

I hear people talking about a murder of crows. In fact several murders of crows. A heap of stones. A flock of sheep. All in connection with the venerable belief, according to various pre-historic, pagan, occult and not so occult sources, in the 12 days of Christmas, or should I say, 12 days after Christmas, in which it is possible to get answers to questions in the form of omens. The gates are open, or some gates are open, and all according to what system you might fancy, a question a day for each of the next 12 months, or all 12 at ones, it is possible to see things. All you need to do is this: close your eyes. Think of a question. Formulate it loudly. Open your eyes. Wait. Shall we say, 12 minutes? Look around. In 12 minutes you can get your answer. (Now that I think of it, this idea with 12 minutes as a solution sounds familiar. You don’t need to believe in anything to succeed. Some Danish politicians used this line once, and I even wasted my time writing about it, and we all know what politicians are known for.) In any event omens are all around us, and they can take many shapes. Sometimes I get to dream. And although I don’t always go to bed with the intent of experiencing paranormal shifts in both the conscious and the unconscious mind, my dreams behold within them the instant materialization of signs. So, with the gates open, here are two instances that have occurred with 2 days apart.
 
On January 1st I dug out an old ring of mine that I haven't had on for ages. I decided to go to bed with it. And I never go to bed with any jewellery. I dreamt of wheels. In the morning of January 2nd, I walked the dog. Upon my return the mailman had delivered a package. It was a gift from card reader and writer Joeanne A. Mitchell. ‘A Kongo kosmogram for you', she said. 'If this sign moves you, then search it to find your meaning,' she further said. I looked at the cross, I looked at my ring still on my finger, and I said: ‘I’ll be dammed.’ Or I think I said that. The ideogram matched my ring. The one sun on it, represented by a dot, anticipated the 4 suns in the Kongo kosmogram, also represented by dots. Joeanne calls it the Sky Diamond.




On January 3rd, after having dreamt that I was running with dogs in Lapland, I opened my eyes and said loudly: I must buy stationery, hand made paper and envelops. I walked the dog again, and upon my return the postal service was to my service. Writer and card reader Enrique Enriquez had sent me two most beautiful postal note books, each filled with what he calls, tongue exercises. All hand-written on exquisite paper. A modern day grimoire.

While I consider the flight of kisses I’ve been enjoying these past 11 days, I’m reminded of what Rainer Maria Rilke once said: “I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.” Enjoy your signs, and your sighs.