Via Flickr:
I went to a dance on Saturday night in honor of, and for the healing of, a woman with cancer. One of the stations at the dance (including, you know, dancing) was a small table set aside for making artwork. After checking the auspices, I created this image of the current Mansion of the Moon — the First, the Horns of Aries. Normally, this Mansion is an image of a black man in a hair shirt throwing a spear at an enemy; and it’s used magically to bring down an enemy. Generally, this Mansion is considered unfavorable for many things, but healing and taking one’s medicine are among the things for which it is favorable. The image is supposedly good for destroying enemies, and it seemed to me that it was a good talisman to destroy cancer.
So, I made this prayer flag of a warrior, loosely based on the Maasai (I forgot the red cloak) of Kenya. The text around him says, “Geniel, great and powerful angel — Strike down cancers of the body, and the soul, and of the nation.” Drawing on cloth with permanent marker was an interesting experience. Once a line was drawn, that was it; I couldn’t go back and correct or fix it.
Accordingly, I worked from the outside in — first I drew in the frame, then the rough shape of the man, then the rough lines of the horizon, then the tree, then the sky and grassland, and finally the shield and then the man himself. It’s certainly not perfect, but I like the idea of creating “art on the fly” like this. It probably took me less than an hour to make, and it serves as a powerful talisman against cancer — as well as being a beautifully quick way to provide someone with a piece of art.
I think this is one of the powerful potentials of the Mansions of the Moon — the notion of carrying around the tools to make twenty-eight images or their variants in quick order, depending on a variety of circumstances, strikes me as a very powerful way to do Art Magic for people. It’s more intense and requires more investment in the work than burning incense or doing candle magic, but it does have the benefit of creating artwork that lasts a little while.
(It’s worth mentioning that I learned about the Mansions from my friend Chris, who is a student of Christopher Warnock, esq. — he of Renaissance Astrology fame. I’m not an astrologer by any means, but I am an artist who likes to work with image and art as magic.)
