Succubus, Temptress of Mystic Remembrance

Lilith by John Collier

"In folklore...a succubus (plural succubi) is a female demon or supernatural being appearing in dreams, who takes the form of a human woman in order to seduce men, usually through sexual intercourse. The male counterpart is the incubus. Religious traditions hold that repeated intercourse with a succubus may result in the deterioration of health or even death." Wikipedia

In Hebrew and Arabic mysticism, the figure exhibited above, of Lilith, is the central character for mythic remembrance of the succubus folklore, where she is a source of domestic superstition and the root of cosmic evil. Read more from the Jewish Women's Archive.

________

Low-lying jungles emerge only steps from the sea wall. As I enter through the darkening canopy my footprints sink deeper into the unsure ground of dying vegetation. I see a man and woman walk assuredly in Muslim dress. 

Muslim shawl-makers, Kashmir 1867 by William Simpson

This is Mother India, though I feel I am trespassing, at the dangerous edge, where two worlds have collapsed side by side. At seeing their weary countenances, their grimacing jaunts, I recoil nearer to the seaside, where the forest is less thick and try a new entry point. Again, wandering through the sweep of jungle, my mind presses onward with increasingly bleary sight as the landscape closes in and my sight nears my eyes, confronting the formidability of a climaxed rainforest. 

Lovers shoot at a tiger in the jungle.
 Illustration to the mystical Sufi text Madhumalati by Meister des Madhu-Malati-Manuskripts

As I enter through a clearing, I see a young woman, a Punjabi Sikh. She welcomes kindly, and warns me of the dangers ahead, though she reminds me that as long as I travel through the lands of her people, the Sikhs, I will be safe. 

Portrait of Rani Jind Kaur aka Jindan by George Richmond

I wander on, enlightened by the meeting with such a kind and endearing sprite. Increasingly entangled in the impenetrable bush, I come to a massive tree. Immediately, I begin climbing to gain a vantage point. The limbs are smooth and strong, a true jungle arbor. As I feel for a lookout, the branches stretch me inwards, and I rest on a limb as thick as my body, crawling toward a knot of branches creating a homely stand, a shaded hollow within the body of the tree. As I press on amid the enwrapping arms of the humungous tree, a woody formation beckons with the same quality as my bedroom. 

Abu'l Hasan and Mansur Squirrels in a Plane Tree by Abu'l Hasan and Mansur

Again, I wake, remembering the seaside cliffs beyond the jungle’s edge, the grandiose rocks, welcoming my step, as I notice two women of different religious custom playing, bounding from rock to rock with amiable laughter and sisterly freedom, I begin sketching in primary colors and rough lines, with an innocent beauty, and gravity enough to keep my word.   

_________

Where does the apple fall?
From a rootless tree?
A groundless source?

- excerpt from "My Name"

My Hanging Drum Falls to its own Beat

Contrasting Sounds by Wassily Kandinsky

A doumbek drum hangs from a thin pine twig, and as I notice, it falls crashing to a strange forest pit beside a pond directly beneath a scraggly ancient tree, an immense figure, an arboreal delight yet demanding a kind of fear in its profound attention of the earth through its girth of roots, and beside the water’s edge, I pick up my drum from the ground, and yet a piece has been cracked off, a square piece, perfectly removed, and yet I still put it to my hip, and suddenly it feels as if a skin has replaced its plastic head and my hands find a delicate touch with rapid rhythmic technique in producing vibration’s adamant trill, a complete sound wave in the full emptiness of a masterful humbling against the unbroken skin of human touch met with the cover of Earth’s delicate heartbeat bringing that fullness to yet another creation of space in the continuous sound, ever unbroken by finger’s brush as a purr unites breath with rest

September 3, 2011

Vietnamese-American War Waste

Triumph of Death by Pieter the Elder Bruegel

On a bicycling tour in Vietnam, open dirt pathways, clear visions of jungle green, translucent blues above and the rich yet sporadic proximity to exotic life, all of a sudden off the bike and crouching low behind a large tree, there are helicopters and smoke trail missiles and bullets whirring through the air with a silent menace, the colors become subdued with a steamy incandescence, a warning boldness that brings out an undead fear in hiding, I look to my right and soldiers are behind another tree preparing a massive latrine, taking out what looks like seed pods of human waste, and at once, it seems to me to double as a mass grave...

Fri, May 27, 2011