The King's Garden

When overcoming artist's block, it is important to start with something familiar and something you are a bit excited about. Do not start your life-defining piece and do not start with that painting that you don't really want to do, but think that you should, which probably caused the block in the first place. I started with something I thought would be fun but familiar first thing yesterday morning and painted half of the day until I finished the background, which is about 3/4 of the painting. What a relief.

It is warm today, but the temperature is set to plummet 30 degrees to a predicted high of 54 on Wednesday. I can feel my air pressure change headache coming on already. The cold temps should be enough to start the dramatic fall color changes, then we get back into the 70s for the weekend.

I do not know if it is the change of seasons, or the spirit of that Hebrew still floating around, but the animals all around are busy and loud. The squirrels are fighting and running back and forth across the fence, alley cats I've never heard before are fighting in the alley, dogs that I've never heard before are barking half of the day. Tia does not bark much, but neighbors moved in next door to her and the neighbors have a kid and a dog. The kid plays with his dog and poor Tia runs back and forth across the fence wanting to play and barking nonstop. Then my neighbors cats decided I am their friend again, since I fed them for four days, and they keep coming over into Cruiser's yard. Cruiser caught Pierre in our garage the other night and kicked his butt, something Cruiser was immensely pleased about for the rest of the evening, but the next day Pierre was right back trying to get into the yard. I came home from work, and there is Cookster in my backyard, with Cruiser having a fit on the inside of the door. Cookster wouldn't go out the gate, he just hissed at Cruiser and hopped the fence.

Almost makes me wish for winter.

I don't know why it took me so long to read those Robert Johnson books. I reread She, The Fisher King, and The Handless Maiden. The Handless Maiden included a part where I went, oh duh, and I could hear my friend Darcy reminding me to rest.

I want to start with a disclaimer here, the mythology is about the inner feminine and inner masculine, both men and women have both. I'm also not going to try to retell too much of the myth, take a look at Johnson's books, they include great background and interpretation, or find them somewhere else, the myth in She is the myth of Eros and Psyche.

The Fisher King is the familiar myth of the knight who goes looking for the Holy Grail to heal the wounded King, travels far and wide searching and slaying dragons on the way, only to find out that it was right where he started, he just needs to ask the right question, Whom does the Grail serve? The masculine healing story is about a journey in consciousness. The Kingdom of God is in you. Interesting that the story of masculine healing is so simple, although it requires courage. It is also interesting that another version of the myth, originating from the same period of time, is the King Arthur myth, and in that myth there are two women who represent the inner feminine gone very wrong, Guenevere and Morgan, no one finds the Grail and the Kingdom is lost. In the masculine myth the knight doesn't seem to need much help from women, but he is warned to stay away from the bad ones.

The general inner feminine myth of Psyche is very complicated, it includes many tasks and levels and Psyche has to be careful not too stay too long on any level and she also needs to follow masculine direction, sorry, but logic and focus are male traits. That complicated dream that you have with lots of levels and people and tasks? That is an inner feminine dream. I had one over and over years ago that started with me trying to hide my daughter from danger and then going to look for a way out. There were many rooms at different levels and people with cranes building things and and one point I entered a hall with something like a fashion show going on and the hall was full of beautiful people and clothes and the designer was trying to get me to stay. That is the Persephone level, where Persephone tries to keep me with her living on my outer beauty alone. How many people do you know stuck on this level? At the end of that dream I go back to find my daughter and send her to safety, but I can't find her.

In the myth of the Handless Maiden, the miller sells his daughter's hands to the devil in exchange for the technology to grind more grain. In the miller's defense, he does not do this outright, he just isn't really paying attention to what the devil says he wants. In a more horrible version, the devil wants the miller's wife's hands, but she offers her daughter's instead. The idea is that the wounded feminine has lost her ability to be useful. The message of the Handless Maiden is that every time you accept something without paying the price, it is trickery and you wound the inner feminine. Promiscuity is a great example, but today the examples are unlimited. Free healthcare, food stamps, our current US President, are more. One good example of someone honoring the inner feminine is Thomas Edison. He paid the price, 1,000 tries it took him to invent the light bulb, no devil dealing or trickery there.

So, now the miller has lots of money for servants to do for the maiden, but she finally leaves in despair, has a good cry, and lives in the forest. In the forest she crosses a treacherous river (which has to be the river Styx/hell) and finds the King's garden, where she rests.

And there it is, that is what I saw in my soul retrieval, the medieval woman with the gyrfalcon (the falcon of Kings) is in the King's garden. Go rest in the King's garden the vision says. In both the Handless Maiden and She the inner feminine sometimes needs to rest, to be quiet, to store up reserves. When I was at my Dad's my friend told me to stop cleaning and rest. Now my Dad's ranch is a great King's garden and a good start, but I'm thinking the King's garden cannot achieve the same purpose when it is also your Dad's garden, something weird for the psyche there. I must have figured Idaho was a good King's garden. Since not much is happening I figure I must not be done with that resting.

Next the King discovers the maiden in his garden (because she is eating his pears, that are carefully cataloged and numbered), marries her, has some silver hands made for her, and for a while she is happy and then she is miserable again. How many people do you know stuck in a life of silver hands, beautiful, but not useful? How many men are out there baffled, but I made you these beautiful hands, why aren't you happy?

The maiden takes her baby and runs off for the forest again, where she has a good cry and rests. She does alright with no hands for a while, until the baby falls into the river and will drown if she doesn't save him and she puts her no hands into the river to save him and comes out with new flesh and blood hands.

The inner feminine is healed by an emergency. She is made useful and she is ready, because she took the time to rest, to build her strength in reserves. This ending has always seemed a bit obscure to me, but Boise is a wonderful place to rest and I really did survive a beating over a long period of time, it is not surprising that the rest period would be long.