A few insights on art, cooking and tarot

Last week I started a new publication to share some thoughts of the day. I didn't sit down to write by the end of the evening. On the next day new impressions came to me and again, I couldn't find time to write. So, I'm gonna write whatever it flows out of me, and let's see what's gonna be the final title of this publication.

"Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye...it also includes

 the inner pictures of the soul."

Edvard Munch

Mr. Munch realized this thruth while making the great "Sream" of the nature. He felt this scream so deeply; a scream represented by the fire-reddish sunset, that his masterpiece became "the 120-million-dollar painting", the most expensive piece of art ever sold on auction.

What does the world, I mean those fancy dressed snobs that own two thirds of the world - see in this child scrawl? Obviously the power of the idea incorporated in this painting is huge, and indeed reveals its creator, and we, with our pure human senses which are beyond logic and common sense, we can feel that and we practically perceive not the material carrier of the meaning (the painting), but what is beyond. There are artworks which do not require pre-information to be understood in order to be appreciated and acknowledged.

And how art could serve magic? For instance, when you do a ritual to acquire knowledge for the higher worlds, you can put one of Dali's or Escher's paintings in the room, for love spells - "The Kiss" by Klimt and in healing rituals - Monet's "Lillies".

A piece of art is so absorbed by ideas, inspiration and meaning that it becomes a living being. Something like the "The Picture of Dorian Gray". Imagine how people admire a masterpiece through the ages. Imagine the enormous accumilated energy, concentrated in one single painting.

Now imagine that painting hanging on the wall in your living room. This is what the rich snobs see in a painting for 120 million dollars! They see a portal of ideas and different meanings. No matter where the painting is located, it continues to exist in the collective subconsciousness, deriving power from it, because it has already become a phenomenon there, becoming a symbol of something. As Van Gogh's "Irises" have turned into a symbol of genius madness, into a symbol of the bitten-off ear (the same as Mike Tyson, by the way), while Picasso transports completely different ideas into our reality.

I don't like standard pagan feasts. Too much misunderstood rituality there. Not for me. Now, see, everybody freaks out during Halloween, every year is all and the same. So what? For me a holiday is any natural phenomenon, where I could show respect to Nature. Indeed, during Halloween the veil gets thin, and weird creatures from another reality break into our own. Have you thought of being the Halloween nightmare for the other side? If the veil between the worlds is thin in this very moment, who says it is a one-way road? Why don't we try to go beyond, no matter what comes in at our side? Well, imagine, if here we get creepy creatures from the lower astral, we could emerge out there as their angels or fairies! Instead of waiting some devilish children to knock on my door trick-or-threatening me (what the fuck?), I prefer to bake my own magic cookies which make evil spirits go away, to put them in front of my door and whoever wants candies to help oneself.

That's why I decided to share with you a recipe for a magickal apple pie. Apple, as Mr. H from "Parallel Reality" has brilliantly revealed here, is an anchoring symbol that sticks you to a certain reality. In this respect, if the apple is used for magickal purposes, it may transport us to another realities, if we know the exact recipe and spell for that. The recipe is very simple and easy to do. You will need:

Apple pie

3 eggs

1 1/2 tea cup* sugar
1 tea cup yoghurt
1 coffee cup oil
2 tea cups flour
1 tea spoon baking soda
1/2 small pack of baking powder

3 apples
100 g wallnuts

cinnamon

The eggs are whipped with the sugar, then add the yoghurt with the slaked baking soda beforehand. After that add the oil and the flour mixed with the baking powder. You stir manually (no mixer to be used) until you get the dough. The pealed-off apples are grated and added to the grinded walnuts, and then the cinnamon. You stir again and put into a round large baking dish, that has been oiled in advance. You bake into a medium-heated oven around 20 minutes.

*These volumes are according Bulgarian standards. If you need the exact weights, please e-mail me. 

As you may noticed, I don't use a mixer. Manual beating of the eggs and shaping the dough for a cake is like the painting with a brush: it inserts the concentrated energy of the artist into the art piece. That is why grandma's cookies cannot compare to the cookies from the supermarket, for example. It is very important before the ritual to take a shower and clear your mind, i.e. to be clean inside and outside. This is a ritual, afterall. Concentrate on the accomplishing of your wish, what kind of realities you want to see, what you want to learn from them, with what purpose: for instanse, to achieve a progress in your magickal work, understanding a certain myth or archetype, etc. When you make the dough and put it into the large dish, write down your wish with your finger, concetrating again on seeing it happened. Visualize how the pie will take you there, what dreams you will have after you have eaten it, how you will clean your chakras, how it will activate your energy and you will open your mind for these new worlds. Leave your wish like this, carved into the dough. When the cake is ready, the side you wrote onto will become the bottom, as you have to turn the cake with the dish upside down on another large plate, which you may nicely decorate. Thus, you will apply the hermetic axiom "As above, so below". You will bring the subtle idea of your wish into solid form in the material world. You may also spread some sugar powder onto it. It is very delicious when served with any fruit (apple, pear, bannana, strawberries...) along with walnuts.

This is my artwork:

...half-consumed, what did you expect?

And the third thing I wanna talk about is the card of The Magician from the Rider-Waite tarot deck. The Magician as an archetype represents the connection between the higher world of ideas and the lower material world. He is the instrument through which the world of ideas gets solid into our visible world, acquiring hardness and thickness. That is why his hands ritually analogize the hermetic axiom "As above, so below".

The Magician manipulates the higher world and performs an alchemical transformation of the thickless and abstract into the solid and tangible. Not accidentally, Waite puts above his head inverted 8 - the symbol of infinity, eternity and immortality. The Magician is the signalman between the two worlds, like the missing link between the monkey and the human being.

       The Magician from Rider-Waite tarot deck

Eliphas Levi's Baphomet

If we look carefully into this card from this particular deck, we will see The Magician's attributes: a cup, a pentacle, a sword, and a wand in his hand. That's right, these are the symbols of the Lesser Arcana. The Magician is marked under number I, because he is the Master of the Elements, the ruler of the four colours of the Lesser Arcana. Waite hints very elegantly, typically for a mason, the role of The Magus as well as the function of the Lesser Arcana. The Magician is Baphomet himself, since Baphomet is an androgyne who unites the two poles (male and female) and is the Master of the elements (Pan). The Magician is literally the crystalized equivalent of the preliminary design of Baphomet in this reality. This is the reason why sorcerers and witches has been hunted down by the Inquisition, and yet are being welcomed with mixed feelings, as something not serious, a quackery; as the whole human kind has a problem with Baphomet in the first place, a problem with the unification and reconciliation of male/female opposition and with the harmony with Nature and its elements. But instead of digging deeper into the symbol of Baphomet, it is anathemized and proclaimed to be the Devil (poor goats).

That's all from me for now. No, just joking. Do you think I'm gonna end with Baphomet, so that you can immediately accuse me of being the devil's servant, ha? Nope. I'm gonna finish where I started from - from art! Because I am a romantic and delicate soul. Salvador Dali is one of my favourite aphorismatics (I continue making up words), and not so much favourite artist, just because he is kinky and has been walking around dark masses for some time in a doubtful attire. Yet he is undoubtedfully intriguing. Oh, I almost forgot - happy birthday to all telemists!

"Don't be afraid of perfection. You will never attain it."

Salvador Dali