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| You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest,
and I smile, and am silent,
and even my soul remains quiet:
it lives in the other world
which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom,
The water flows.
Li Po (701 - 762)
from Endless River: Li Po and Tu Fu: A Friendship in Poetry, Translated by Sam Hamill
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| Home Protection
 Photo taken 10/2011 as an assignment for a recent “Night Photography” class.
Painted and gifted by a friend, this has been hanging over the back door for 16 years or so.
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| See below photos for text. Thanks!
Sphinx, Satyr and Friends
I photographed this series of images in 2011 at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia. They are a portion of the wall decorations in The Gallery of the History of Ancient Painting. The first url below features a panoramic view of the gallery where some of this ornamentation is visible. The Greek revival style room features neoclassical marble sculptures by Antonio Canova. It was designed by Leo von Klenze as commissioned by Tsar Nickolas I in 1838. This gallery is part of his work on the New Hermitage, a public museum that originally housed the Romanov collection of antiquities, paintings, coins and medals, cameos, prints and drawings, and books.
The walls are covered with human and animal forms interwoven with flowers and foliage. Such decorative ornamentation is called grotesque. The word comes from the same Latin root as "grotto", meaning a small cave. Originally an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art, such designs were fashionable as fresco wall decoration, floor mosaics, etc.. They were rediscovered and then copied in Italy at the end of the 15th century. Grotesque ornament received a further impetus from discoveries of original Roman frescoes at Pompeii and the other buried sites from the middle of the 18th century. Spreading from Italian to the other languages, the term is used for types of decorative patterns using curving foliage elements.
In art, grotesques are ornamental arrangements of arabesques with interlaced garlands and small and fantastic human and animal figures. Themes such as plant/animal hybrids and metamorphosis are common, as well as vines, flowers, shrines, frames and pagan entities – all charming and fanciful with no particular regard to logic or perspective. I find them colorful and fun; an amazing continuation of ancient imagination into the present day.
These and 7 others in the series will be available as cards and prints from Kindred Paths in Salt Lake City very soon. Look for them!
For more information see http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/08/hm88_0_1_38.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grotesque . Gretchen Faulk
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Invocation to an Ancient Mother
Woman
Goddess
Kunti
Yoni
Cosmos
Our Source.
Womb, tomb
Open your mouth wide
Swallow us, birth us,
We have come for you,
Come now for us.
Be here around us,
Be here within us
We adore you!
Reese Nebeker 1997
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| Beginning today I will have a set of photos of Pagan interest for sale at Kindred Paths in Salt Lake City (thanks Steve!). Here are twelve friends – waiting to be added to your altars and home space; Pan, Aphrodite, Gaia, Kuan Yin, Shiva, Horus and more. These devotional-type images are available as greeting cards, 5x7 and 8x10’s. All photos are beautifully matted and ready to frame. Even the greeting-card size looks great framed.
A couple of examples that have been blogged here are Aphrodite; http://gfaulk.livejournal.com/35810.html and Kuan Yin; http://gfaulk.livejournal.com/21887.html .
Kindred Paths is having a Harvest Open House Saturday from 4 to 9 PM; 3804 S Highland Dr #1. Please drop in and take a look!
Blessed Be –
Gretchen Faulk
FaulkFoto
PS – see my next post for one of the new images – Venus of Willendorf.
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Faunus
Walk lightly oe'r my sunny fields and round my little farm,
And spare the firstlings of my flock from blight or wasting harm, Dear Faun, who know'st the flying nymphs to follow and to charm.
We'll slay a kid, a tender kid of one full year, well grown,
And with the wine which Venus loves, the brimming cups we'll crown,
And round the ancient altar's horns the incense shall be strown.
And when December's nones come round, the days beloved of thee, In the long grass the herds and flocks shall sport upon the lea;
And man and beast in idleness the livelong day shall be.
For thee the very wolves shall play the fearless lambs among;
For thee the very trees shall shed their leaves so fresh and strong; And the plowman shall adore thee with rustic dance and song.
Horace Ode 3.18 Trans. Henry Herbert 1891
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|  You know the place: then
Leave Crete and come to us
waiting where the grove is
pleasantest, by precincts
sacred to you; incense
smokes on the altar, cold
streams murmur through the
apple branches, a young
rose thicket shades the ground
and quivering leaves pour
down deep sleep; in meadows
where horses have grown sleek
among spring flowers, dill
scents the air. Queen! Cyprian!
Fill our gold cups with love
stirred into clear nectar. Sappho of Lesbos
Trans. by Mary Barnard
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Bodhidharma
Mahakashyapa was the first, leading the line of transmission;
Twenty-eight Fathers followed him in the West;
The Lamp was then brought over the sea to this country;
And Bodhidharma became the First Father here [China]
His mantle, as we all know, passed over six Fathers,
And by them many minds came to see the Light.
Suzuki, D.T. (1948), Manual of Zen Buddhism
Photo taken 8/2011 at Green Gulch Zen Center.
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