"Reunion of the Faerytale Brigade" – July 25, 2012

2012-7-25

The Books of Fae

2012-7-25 – "Reunion of the Faerytale Brigade"

"… One of my all-time favorite moments in the Mythica happened in New York City in 2012, and is a perfect example of the principle that All our Stories are connected over Time. …"

Returning to New York city in 2012 I felt like a magical adventurer, seeing the lines of story and synchronicity that lay beneath the surface of the world

Being in the city was both familiar and strange. I had come directly from the fields of Faerie in Cascadia where the world was flush with the music of the trees and had returned to my hometown after ten years abroad. The scents and textures were so powerful, moving through me like paint from a violin. I was tempted to take my shoes off and walk barefoot on the pavement so as to feel the deva loci of York directly, but contented myself to wander the lines of synchronicity that gave rise to the worlds upon our timeline downward towards Union Square.

It was a powerful reminder to be in the city. My relationship with Her had been a deeply elemental thing and as I walked her streets I felt her open to me. I was born on the island of Manhattan, my form fashioned from the vibrations that cascaded through her substance at that time, and it was in my wanderings through her substance that the idea of the underlands, the subtle landscape of the Mythica that gave rise to our synchronicities and multiverse of worlds, came to light. Returning now as I did in the sharp chiaroscuro between the realms of the forest and that of the city, what had been an on again off again melody of clarity during my early years in that place clarified into waves of subtle vibration, the movements of the people a chorus of glimmering hues which pulsed rhythmically beneath the pavement like a colored heart.

I did not see things on the surface of the world, and here I saw the threadlines of energy which made up the people and their process as geometries of consciousness, patterns which existed across lifetimes and which played out as the dramas and comedies of our shared lives. The sense that I was living the myth of the wandering magician with the vantage of the subtle world was thick.

I had always loved coming to Union Square, considering her one of the hearts of the city, and had many times come to the Regal theatre to see films as well as to pay my monthly tithe to the Goddess of Story at the Forbidden Planet bookstore only a block further south.

"Seuss Synchrony"

When I had left New York city and give my promise to Vogel that I would return ten years earlier, it had been to discover the real magical world and bring back proof of it's existence to the people. Over the years and through my studies at the Academy of the Ancient Arts, i'd come to see the proof of the most basic axiom of magic, "As Within, So Without – As Above, So Below", which in the modern Age was the idea that we lived in the outward reflection of our own inner substance, and that by changing that inner substance you could change your reality from the inside-out. For me, the documentation of the Quest was a proof of this, and I used my photography in a strict artistic discipline of witnessing what happened on my path as an example of that principle in action.

As I was feeling nostalgic for the streets of Union Square and SoHo, I found myself walking through the streets in my usual fugue. It was a thing i'd done many, many times when i'd lived in New York years earlier, my feet following the pulsing textures in the ethers to pockets and places known only to the city herself.

The art of arriving, which is what I had called my photography, was based on the idea of arriving in circumstances based on one's vibrational substance. It framed the concept of my documentation as an exploration of the nature of reality itself, at the things which arrived on our path over the course of our timeline of experience. In this case, when I walked down to the SoHo district, I came upon a gallery which was featuring the work of Dr. Seuss and Brian Froud, both of whom were connected to the aka which empowered my magics.

This was a significant thing. Life isn't what it appears as on the surface. Things are made of things. I'd spoken with Vogel years earlier as we'd explored the world of New York art together – that there was a prima materia that underlay all the mediums of art – a clay of consciousness which was reshaped into all the forms of the material plane. What we experienced on our path was that, it was the gross expression of a subtle thing, much like the tip of an iceberg poking above the surface of the water. In this case, it wasn't simply that Dr. Seuss and Brian Froud's work was being shown in SoHo at that time, it was that I was arriving in that exact moment of time and space to meet the very reflection of the energies that resonated with me in the field. In this my readers should remember, I had just come from the realms of Faerie in Cascadia (Oregon), flush with the bards and magicians of the western lands. I was merely a week or so away from my annual pilgrimage to the Faerieworlds festival created by Emilio and Kelly-Miller Lopez which was heavily influenced by their close friendship with Brian Froud himself.

Without doubt, the scent of Faerie was with me, flush in the leaves upon my garments and my movements through her fractal mirror in York herself.

"V" is for Varlow

One of my all-time favorite moments in the Mythica happened in New York City in 2012, and is a perfect example of the principle that All our Stories are connected over Time.

As I return to New York for the passing of my brother Tyler, I re-encounter the members of the Fairytale Brigade in perfect synchronicity. It is here, in a confluence of moments at a temple of Story, that I encounter Veronica Varlow in a mystical moment, and find my way to the realms of Art and Commerce in the fields of SoHo. It was a momentous thing, for I had not seen her since "The Faerytale Brigade" episodes of 2002. To meet her here, now in the temple of story that played upon the surface as the Barnes n' Noble was a thing of pure synchrony, a proof of the principle of the worlds within the world.

What looks on the surface like a Barnes n' Noble is merely the tip of it's true essence, for in the deep places of the world all bookstores as well as all libraries and collections of tomes and tellings are extensions of the Akashic Library manifest through the forms and foundations on the surface of the world.

There was nowhere to sit. Nowhere …except at the table near the window. One occupied by a woman in a long gown illuminated in light.

Immediately, I felt the energies, the rush of Story moving through the subtle octave of the bookstore.

Return to the Dollhouse

Gods of New York

This will be one my first movements back into the "world of art" that is the megalopolis

Zina goes into his project, that of honouring and saving the butterflies, which feels entirely apropos in the context of the emergent World …

I go outside, feeling the voice of the city. Of Yorke. Witnessing the way her skin looks in the rain, splattered with rainbows, the silhouette of the people the expressions of her shifting canvas.

I go outside and the Lady obliges me, the rainfall weaving a canvas of colors that shimmer like liquid gold before my eyes, speaking to me in the elemental tones of the city herself.

It's nostalgic. The light between the lights was always the basis for my photography and for the inspiration of the Mythica, and it was during my communion with the deva loci of New York that I saw the world beneath the world which existed for us all, even those living in the cauldron of chaos that was the living city. When I had lived here years before I would sometimes walk barefoot through the city, feeling the electric pulse of her thoughts and the rumbling voices of the trains beneath her skin in the circulatory systems of her urban expanse. The rain had been my ally then as she was now, shifting the quality of light ever-so-slightly to reveal the underland of colors that was always there.

I am aware that James has introduced me to Someone Important in the Scene, and I am grateful to see his photography and the work that has wrought his studio in the coveted landscapes of SoHo, and do my best to communicate the documentary nature of my own photography and the art of arriving as a proof of the axis of our personal and collective realities, though I am unsure if I am able to translate it's depths across the divide.

It's the heart. At the end of the day, beneath the constant shuffling and scavenging for status across the urban regime, beyond the layers upon layers of makeup and make-believe is always the colors of the song and the alchemical inspiration that comes from shared making.

Gods of New York – Nights in Red Satin

The string of synchronicities which defines my story leads me into a carnival of New York nightlife and where my camera catches new glimpses of the American Gods. Here, Vogel acts as guardian and ambassador to the space, and I discover that he was instrumental in Kiana Love's marriage as well as many threads of story connected to the peoples I met on the playa and who I knew in the times before the Quest.

They look at me above a burning candleflame, the whites of their eyes made into slits of shadow in the angle and I wonder – what is Godhood but a shift in the light? What is the nature of our sight within and without, of the ways in which we perceive our visage upon the dreaming world but the marriage of luminance and meaning?

What is Godhood after all but a shift in the Light?

Yet this was not the fields of Cascadia. It was New York, and the Gods here demanded a different tribute.