Gem-Gnosis-Gem

Chapter 2; Serpent of Dreams

Flowers today blooming by the pathway
line the edge of tomorrows grave.
Bright shining way, living in the shadows,
Trying to be the master of tomorrow's slave.
Down in the mine,circled around a Diamond,
Serpent of your expectations sleeps a nervous dream
"Serpent of Dreams"--Jorma Koukanen

My first memory is of a man's hand reaching towards me as I was regaining consciousness. I knew that hand like the back of my mind. On that hand, in a Gold Ring was an engraved gem, a figure with snakes as legs holding a shield in one hand
and macelike weapon in the other.The head of this figure was of a bird, a Rooster? Phoenix? Starling?
I knew this symbol as well as the back of my Father's hand that was reaching to help me come back from one of my frequent Petit Mal epileptic seizures.
It was years later when I first heard the word
ABRAXAS.
I was doing what any strange and sickly young boy who lived in an old, 4 story, Victorian house full of Antiquities and ancient artifacts would be doing. I was in the attic with a pile of old books looking for the answers to questions not yet asked and connections to my future past.
The sun was shining through the small window making the dust look like a microscopic Galaxy swirling in the dark and cornerless room.
As I was thumbing through an old book called;
"5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry", I came across a picture that seemed oddly familiar, a figure in a chariot driven by four white horses, this figure was the same as the one in my father's ring. Never having seen this image anywhere else, I felt as if I had made a great discovery...., little did I know then that I had found something that would be the key to a universe of human knowledge and a personal quest that would last my whole life.
As I went down the steep, rickety stairs to tell of my discovery, I could hear the sounds of intense adult discussion and the laughter that always seemed to accompany it.
Walking into my father's special room I could feel the excitement and anticipation as he and a few of his friends were gathered around a large wooden box slowly removing the excelsior packing material.
"Here it is," he said. "Careful, please, careful, " said Hap "Is it OK?"
As my father took away the last piece of old cloth wrapping, the excitement dissolved to a reverent hush. In his hand I could see a piece of glass, almost glowing with it's own numinous light, A piece of glass so old, the silica from the ancient sand it was made from, had started to Opalize.
Hap, my father's friend, exhaled.... "Oh yes!!, It's perfect, no chips, no cracks!"
As my father placed the small, amphora shaped bottle in the delicate, verdigris coated bronze holder that came with it, I said "Dad, Dad, what is it??"
Turning to me and noticing for the fist time that anybody else was in the room, he said, with his mysterious smile,
"Paul, this is one of the most unique and precious
things you will ever see....it' a 4,000 year old Egyptian Tear Vase used to capture the tears of Pharaoh's daughter upon his death".
As I gazed at this, I could feel myself swirling into that galaxy of dusty time, which this house and my whole life seemed to revolve around. When my father's hand reached out to to steady me,
I saw his ring. I said, "Dad, That's Abraxas!!
He smiled at me and said "Yes,.......I Gnow".
To be continued…

Gem-Gnosis-Gem

Being the true story of a magic Gem and a luminous Illusion

Chapter 1;
Crown of Creation

You are the Crown of Ceation and you've got no place to go
Soon you attain the stability you strive for
in the only way that it's granted
in a place among the fossils of our time.
Life is change, how it differs frm the rocks
My life is to survive and be alive for you
Crown of Creation----Jefferson Airplane,1968

It was 1969 in Berkeley, California
( Ahh, it was the best of times, It was the worst of times )
I had recently arrived on the Rainbow Coast in a wave
Of young seekers and runaways, people whom only a few years before viewed the world in black and white and gray. Even the red of the blood of our first televised national tragedy in Dallas in 1963 had to be imagined.
In June of 1963, a Bhudhist monk named Thich Quang Duc, sat down in an intersection in Saigon, Viet Nam, and as a protest to religious and political oppression in Viet Nam and around the world, poured gasoline on himself and set himself on fire.
In the fiersest gray tones the worlds imagination was seared to a charcoal crisp.
Quang duc did not move or cry out from his meditative position
His heart was found intact and now resides in a monastery in Viet Nam.

Wandering the streets of revolution and revulsion, in a dayglo fog brought on by days and nights of acting as a volunteer in a generational social/drug experiment, I found myself In CODY’s Bookstore on Telegraph Avenue. Amid piles and shelves of all sorts of books and publications, from college textbooks on the technical aspects of the joys of nuclear "power", to assorted copy’s of Zap Comics and the Berkeley Barb with it’s calls for free pschyadelic drugs and mandatory nakedness.
I came across a large and dusty old tome under a pile of books labeled -Occult and Heresy-, called,
"The Secret Teachings of All Ages"
by Manly P. Hall.
As I picked up this book of ancient mysteries, a big beautiful book first published in 1929, a feeling, came over me, like a cross between De Jevu and finding a gem crystal that has worked it's way up to the surface after millennia in the dark heart of the earth,
Had I seen this book before? I leafed thru the pages as if I was brushing the dirt from this crystal that had been formed in the deep unconscious of a living planet to see and reflect the very Sunlight that created it. I saw the word Abraxas and felt on my hand the pull of gravity from a small cemetery in New Jersey. A place I had last seen what seemed lifetimes ago. Sensing the gravity of the situation I raised my hand to my head as if to touch this galaxy of swirling thoughts and emotions, a universe devoid of space and time, and felt the cool touch of jasper and gold on my skin. Then it all came back to me. Well, not all of it……yet.

As an artist, one is always looking for an appearance and definetion of the muse for inspiration.
She takes many forms.

The Muse as Artist ……GOLDIE

Tall cool drink of water is the first thing that comes to mind when she walks in the room.
Not because she's long and tall with great legs that go all the way to the floor or the fact that she moves with a fluid grace that reminds me of ice and snow melting.
But because all of a sudden its like a halogen spotlight has been lit next to me focused on her and things seem to be heating up pretty fast.
A smile and a few bright words later and I could swear some body must have lit a fire close by. Maybe in the large fireplace in this cozy ski resort bar in the mountains of Idaho, but wait a second, it's the second day of summer and the temperature has been around 80 degrees all afternoon (altho it feels like a lot more than that now!) nobody would waste wood like that around here and besides it seems more like the fire and smoke of exotic flowers and ocean driftwood and the reflection of countless golden sunsets in eyes of true Aquamarine, like scintillating gems from Neptune's private stash, as if it was her right and duty and responsibility to be the last person of the day to say goodnight to the Sun and keep it's light and heat undiminished and radiating across this palmed beach through the dark and steamy night.
Whoa, wasn't I in a bar somewhere in some mountains?
As my eyes adjust to the glare and this heat starts to feel normal or at least appropriate, we start to talk and with a simple unspoken invitation she and her sister come over to join us.
Carrying her plate and champagne glass towards me she radiates as much as before, but, I sense a subtly different source for this thick, almost suffocating hot wind that is swirling between us, It comes from deep in me. The red an black fire of a Garnet that has been in the depths of a dormant (but not extinct) volcano, waiting for the pressure to build, so, like the great Kundalini, "Serpent of Dreams ", it can expand and rise from the red chakra of the mountain, swelling and gaining strength and purpose towards it's inevitable meeting and fusion with the white hot star that created it.
She sets down her glass like a barefoot high priestess with an ankle bracelet of seaweed and gems made from stars that fell into the sea that she gathered herself, offering a grail to Pele, Goddess of the volcano and muse to the fires within.
We make real eye contact and she touches my arm. Suddenly the room grows even hotter, my clothes are getting tighter, my neck and back feel like an old wool sweater that's been hanging in an attic closet for twenty years. I've got to have more, more heat, more light.
My clothes are shredding as my whole body seems to be changing like a chrysalis emerging from a mid life cocoon, the whole bar is watching now as long, featherlike antennae emerge from the top of my head, my arms turn to wings of fragile lace and as I fly with reckless abandon into the burning heart of the Sun, I hear the words "I'm an Artist"

I really need a tall cool drink of water!!