Sunday, January 27, 2008

The Living Window

It’s a long dark winter in these mountains. Black, white and grey, greenblack, blue grey, light held in the snow and the clouds, not much left over. Our lives are shaped and conditioned by light or by its a absence.

I recall the church I used to attend in Montreal forty years ago. Cold and dark indeed, and a winter that held its grip well into April. Even on the dark days the stained-glass windows were full of light. The rich blues and reds would take what light there was and turn it into warmth, and when the winter sun did come out the windows would explode with coloured fire.

Light is interesting that way. You can’t see it at all until it comes into relationship with something, and when it does, as far instance with stained glass, it is held and defined by that relationship. It’s maybe not a big stretch to think about the Divine, the Light Itself, in the same way. One Light, lots of windows. No window, no Light. When the Light hits the window, the window becomes alive. We build the windows ourselves, either individually or as a culture – and it seems pretty important to remember that when the window takes on a life of its own. The many different kinds of Jesus windows, Buddha windows, Mohammed windows, Krishna windows, are alive.

The Tarot itself can be seen this way, as a set of seventy-eight stained glass windows, each coming to life when it`s pointed at the Light. The card that may speak most clearly about this is the Magician.

The Magician is the first Form. When the raw energy arcs into the Manifest it can leap into Action (the Fool) or Form (the Magician). The Magician has access to raw undefined Light. As light holds all the colours of the spectrum, so Light holds all the Potentiality of Form. Think Big Bang. The first supercharged superheated unimaginable particle which held the whole universe in itself. The Magician says `Build it and They will come. ``

The Fool leaps and the Magician dances. You can`t hear the music till you watch him dance.

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