INSPIRATIONS AND RESEARCH >

- FLOWER -

Blossom has such a power in it. And fragility, too.

What’s your favorite flower growing up? Mine were irises, astilbes and peonies. Plus all the wild ones that I would stroke, gather, arrange, dry them, make wreaths or play secrets - a game where in the ground we would burry flowers and cover them with a piece of a colored glass (for someone to discover).

A blossom throughout history symbolized the feminine principle. Rose Apple bloomed on a sacred tree of life. Worshipers of Aphrodite used to call their ceremonies - mysteries of the rose. Trees and flowers often embodied feminine presence in ancient Buddhist stories - “prescient and nurturing, these trees-cum-goddesses are expressions of the sacred feminine in the world” (Wendy Garling). Five petaled rose (cinquefoil) found in Gothic architecture was one of the multitude of hermetic symbols related to the myths of old societies were feminine was revered, as speculated by historians. Cinquefoil itself dates back to the Roman times when it was called the rose of Venus because it mimicked the pentagrammic path of the planet in the sky at night. In Italy and Greece, the earliest tree to awaken and bloom in spring is almond blossom which in ancient symbolism conveyed recurring miracle, promise of life and abundance. Barbara Walker in her dictionary of symbols and sacred objects gets even more specific - “almonds were female-genital signs and maternity charms from very ancient times. The virgin birth of the god Attis was conceived by a magic almond.”

- MANDORLA OR VESICA PISCIS -

Womb of the world and portal to the divine.

In Italian mandorla means almond nut, to which shape it refers. Mandorla is created by two identical super-imposing circles (Vesica Piscis). The mystical space of this intersection hold multiple meanings amongst ancient traditions. A lot of them point to the feminine principle - to the creative power that ignites in this overlap - birth canal. Basically, the matrix for all life on earth. Perhaps one of the most ancient sacral symbol known to humans, mandorla is indication of the union. By bridging dualities humans unveil deeper truths in themselves. Opening into the divine? A cosmic womb? “With an unintentional double entendre, the mandorla was sometimes piously interpreted as a gateway to heaven” (Barbara Walker). Vesica Piscis translates as bladder of the fish (or vessel of the fish) from Latin and as a sign depicts those interlocking circles. The overlapping plays with two energies and gives a third, sacred dimension of almond shaped secret. It can be read as dynamism of dichotomies - divinity / humanity, male / female, spirit / matter, heaven / earth, conscious / unconscious, right brain / left brain - and the truth of in-between. It also looks like vulva - or yoni in sanskrit - which stands for holy passage for the soul to the material world. Creative force, the Mother-spirit that gave birth to the world and the gods, the principle of both the birth and dissolution.

According to the Epic of Gilgamesh, the plant of eternal life grew in the deep, another term for the womb of the world (Barbara Walker).

Archeologist Marija Gimbutas devoted her life to the symbolism of Old European Great Goddess. In her book The Language of The Goddess, she wrote “that those sacred images and symbols remain a vital part of the cultural heritage of Europe. Most of us were surrounded in the childhood by the fairy world, which contained many images transmitted from the Old Europe (Neolithic period). In some nooks of Europe, as in my own motherland, Lithuania, there still flows sacred and miraculous rivers and springs, there flourish holy forests and groves, reservoirs of blossoming life, there grow gnarled trees brimming with vitality and holding the power to heal; along waters there still stand menhirs, called ‘Goddesses’, full of mysterious power. The Old European culture was the matrix of much later beliefs and practices. Memories of a long-lasting gynocentric past could not be erased, and it’s not surprising that the feminine principle plays a formidable role in the subconscious dream and fantasy world. It remains (in Jungian terminology) the repository of human experience and a depth structure.” (1991)