The ultimate jig saw

La Llamada, 1961 by Remedios Varo.

On my way to find dinner, I came across a beautiful cafe bookshop and wandered in. Even, as here, where most of the books are not in (to me) an accessible language, I am always interested in what a bookstore chooses to sell.

I was struck by a substantial section on Judaism that echoed a sign in this morning's Starbucks that it was kosher compliant, obviously this suburb of Mexico City has a substantial Jewish population.

I noticed that there was one whole section of the books in English that dealt with fantasy, science fiction and the occult. They were significantly over-represented here than in either a standard English bookshop or similar sized collections in stores in other countries that I have visited.

Cue images of rabbis taking coffee and pastries with ageing English occultists... They probably end up discussing the Kabbalah!

They are no doubt observed with the wondering eyes of Mexican philosophers as this too was a section more sizable than the 'usual'!

English occultists put me in mind of the English painter, Leonora Carrington, long resident of Mexico City, and her friend, Remedios Varo, whose painting 'The Call' is shown here. Both of them had a deep standing interest in the esoteric and both began as surrealists until their art was deepened and transformed by the development of a personal language of symbols.

One of the more unique offerings of this book store were 1,000 piece jig saws of several of Varo's paintings - completing them would be an exacting task of patience but you would, as a result, get to know them intimately!

I noticed too a complete catalogue of her work that I will probably buy. I love her work for its precision, jewel like beauty and narrative mystery. Here in 'The Call' an illumined woman carries a sacred item through a shadowy street. She is both utterly composed yet vulnerable and the grey figures emerging from the walls are both threatening in their apparent unconsciousness and yet as human beings endowed with possibilities of grace. It speaks a story of mission out of a symbolism that is both uniquely her own and yet compellingly universal.

I am reminded of the Jungian analyst, Robert Johnson, reminding us that our shadows are places where we put the rejected parts of ourselves which are both our despised portions and portions of our unacknowledged gifts. As the woman glides through the street, dedicated to her call, she awakens shadows that represent both potentialities for growth: our dark rejections and our neglected intimations of glory.

Comments

The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...

Red Shambala

Nicholas Roerich is oft depicted as a spiritual seeker, peace visionary, author of numberless paintings, and a brave explorer of Central Asia. However, Andrei Znamenski in his 'Red Shambala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia' has him perform another role - that of geopolitical schemer. The scheming did have at its heart a religious vision - of a coalition of Buddhist races in Central Asia that would establish a budding utopia - the Shambala of the title - from which the truths of Buddhism (and co-operative labour) would flow around the globe. This would require the usurpation of the 13th Dalai Lama to be replaced by the Panchen Lama guided by the heroic saviour (Roerich) who appears above dressed for the part. In the achievement of these aims, the Roerichs (including his wife, Helena, who had a visionary connection with 'Mahatmas' whose cryptic messaging guided their steps) were willing to entertain strange bedfellows that at one time include...

The Jewel in the Crown

I spent six months in Nizhny Novgorod ostensibly as both the chair and the director of a micro-finance fund. I must confess much of that work -apart from the spectacular resignation of my predecessor as director - has faded from view but what I vividly recall is at weekends progressing through Paul Scott's 'The Raj Quartet' and subsequently re-watching its painstaking and triumphant dramatization (by Granada) that I had watched, long before, on the television. It was without doubt my most deeply cherished reading experience to date. This extraordinary narrative of the British in the last, declining days of colonial rule that begins with the doomed relationship of Hari Kumar and Daphne Manners, her rape, and the injustice of Kumar as accused by Ronald Merrick, the Police Superintendent, and one of the most malevolent characters ever created in fiction. He is a magnified alter ego of Scott himself especially the sharply, destructively repressed homosexuality. The narrati...

Golgonooza

Search This Blog