brainstorming for "talked with by fire" title page

It has taken a lot longer to get this out to you than I had previously anticipated, but today I present you with the proposed title page image for To Some I Have Talked with by the Fire. The first initial I drafted up back in November was centered around a flock of birds(presumably they will be ravens, but at the moment they are a nice generic animal of the avian variety.) That initial turned out so well that it was decided to carry that theme over into the title page. This title page breaks the continuity of figure centered imagery which has been used for all the other poems to date. However, between the up sweeping flames, the rising bird, and the smoke swirls, I feel that the visual plane is being used roughly in the same manner of that in previous images. Therefore, I do not believe that the lack of a human figure in this image will be a problem.

Elements:
fire and raven - And of the embattled flaming multitude/ who rise, wing above wing, flame above flame
bats - Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees
knife/dagger/etc - and with the clashing of their sword-blades make/ a rapturous music, will the morning break

As you can see in the image above I am playing with the idea of writing the poem's title in the smoke, however, I'm not certain how this will work. Unless I can find a way to work the titles into all the title page images themselves, then I will not be doing that.

My apologies that this is so short, but there will be more to come next Monday or later in the weekend.

brainstorming and analyzation for "elemental powers" title page

Greetings all! I am thrilled to death with what I have to post today. Drafted up over a chicken sandwich at chili's, the end sketch/idea is nigh perfect. The Poet Pleads with the Elemental Powers has always been an interesting problem for me because there are so many elements that are obviously important but I've had no idea how to include them all and yet make anything feel cohesive. Last November I drafted up a first intial for this piece that represented the polar dragon mentioned and my notations from that same day focused on pulling out all the seemingly important poetic elements. Today something just seemed to click and below is what resulted which (I repeat) I'm very happy with. Instead of explaining it all here like usual, I'll explain in between images. Here we go.

Complete Image:

Like I discussed last week, it was pretty clear off the bat that the title page needed to feature a human figure. The purpose of said woman in this particular title page is three fold. 1- She is the embodiment of her whoever her may be (encircle her, love and sing her into peace; whither her footseptes go) 2- She is representative of rose/Immortal Rose. Rose appears in many of Yeats' poems, and more often than not rose is a stand in for the woman Yeats was madly in love with. Notice the actual rose drawn in this woman's hair. 3- She is the embodiment of the elemental powers/ The Powers. The Powers are clearly important to the poem since they are mentiong repeatedly, and find thier way into the poem's title. For the life of me though, I could not think of a way to picture them. An ethereal type woman is always a good path to go when representing mythical figures so that is that path I chose - that of least resistance. To emphasize the elemental part of it, notice the four part wheel that floats between her hands. There is a close up of this below, but this is essentially a wheel that holds the four elements - earth, air, fire & water. I will discuss the sun and moon further down.
The Elemental Wheel/ Sun/ Moon:

See individual images for details

The Elemental Wheel:

This wheel floats between the woman's hands (see top picture) and portrays said elements in the manner that they appear Elemental Powers. 1- water = waves (Great Powers of falling wave; Like the pale cup of sea) 2- fire = flames (unfold your flaming wings; falling wave and wind and windy fire) 3- wind = gusts of wind (windy fire; when winds have gathered) 4- earth = brown darkness with flecks of gold (uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep). The earth bit is perhaps a bit of a stretch, but all the other elements were so clearly present in the poem that I knew earth had to be there somewhere as well. Since it is not uncommon for places below the earth to be poetically referred to as the deep that is what I went with.

The Moon and Sun:

Hello alchemical imagery, how you have been missed! This poem says both the nets of day and night and when winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim. The sun and moon can clearly be seen as merely a literal portrayal of night and day. However, we both know that Yeats was very fond of slipping alchemical references into his work, and nothing is so glaringly iconographicaly alchemical as these two (explained in a second). Also, from a practical perspective, Yeats mentioned sun and moon turned dim. Does that mean that they were both fading out? In life the sun fades out and is replaced by the moon, likewise the moon gives way to the sun. Not even during a eclipse are both completely gone. this logic leads me to belive that f so than Yeats could not have literally meant sun and moon to mean "sun and moon". They must be standing in for something as symbols.

The Moon:

In alchemy, the moon (also Luna and Diana) is the female aspect of the opus (the continual distillation process necessary to create the Philosopher's Stone). Essentially it is silver (literal or philosophical). It gets complicated, but for the purpose of simplicity, consider Luna to be the name of an elixir that was used to transmute a base metal into pure silver. Pure silver is considered to be only slightly more impure than gold. By combining this silver with pure gold in something called a chemical wedding it helped form the active component essential to creating the Philosopher's Stone. As you would remember if I had posted notes about this (I swear I did but I can't find it now) the Philosopher's Stone was not only a literal object that was able to turn base metals into gold. It was believed that the Stone had the power to make all imperfect things perfect, and would turn a normal man into an extremely illumined philosopher. It symbolized a light brought into darkness and embodied the merger of divine love & divine wisdom. Due to the symbollic weight placd on the Stone it has to be of some bearing here. I'm not quite sure yet how that plays into this poem, but I promise I'm working on it. As for the position of the moon, I visually prefer the waning crescent because its opening faces the female figure. Since the root of this image is iconography/symbolism though, I need to find out what connotations (preferably of Celtic origin) are tied to the waxing and waning moon. More on this eventually as well.

The Sun:

Just as the moon (Luna/Diana) was the female aspect of the chemical wedding, the sun (Sol) is the wedding's male aspect. The sun is representative of gold as prepared via the art of alchemy. There was no other element equal to the sun's inherent symbolism, which philosophically represented divine light. Alchemist Jean de la Fontaine wrote Gold is the sun; to make gold, is to become God. The Philosopher's Stone (see The Moon) was born through the marriage of Sol and Luna. Visually the presence of both Sol and Luna together would then probably suggest the possibility of perfection, philosophical illumination, etc without its actual achievement. Again I need to think about this, but that is off the top of my head. Along this vein though, you will note that I have placed the sun and moon on opposite sides of the central figure. The possibility of their merging exists, but her presence prevents this from happening.

You will notice seven circles nestled within the rays of the sun. These represent the Seven Lights (and though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept). I'm not certain why Lights is capitalized, but there must be a reason to turn it into a proper noun. The number seven holds spiritual connotations as well as magical ones, but I am not well versed enough in this to comment at the moment. We know that Yeats was an active member of the Order of the Golden Dawn so I'd say that some magical connotation is very very likely. Why that makes Lights a proper noun though still remains a personal mystery.

Whew! This ended up being far longer than I had anticipated. It certainly looks like I have my research work cut out for me, but yay for the image! This is the most excited I've been in days so the pending research seems more like an exciting adventure into unknown lands, as opposed to a chore or other undesirable activity. I look forward to seeing you all next week. Who knows what lies in store for then.

mythology alert - brigid and fire

Ok ok ok so I know that I have run this figure in the ground, but I'm about to move on so indulge me one last time. This past weekend I mentioned something about Brigid being the goddess of fire. This has only been mentioned specifically once in all the reading I have been doing and it was in a rather new agey reference so I've been lead to conclude that this is a more recent attribution to her as opposed to a historically authentic connection. After all, even Oxford reference materials don't mention it. However, I am going to be keeping any visual references to fire in this piece fro two reasons. One is not a soundly based academic reason, and pretty much consists of the fact that I really like fire and think that it will be cool. The second reason though is academically based. Both Brigid the goddess and Brigid the saint are patronesses of smiths/blacksmiths. (As a quick aside, Oxford's Dictionary of Irish Mythology [Ellis 50] also connects these two Brigids so I think at this point there really is no question that they are tied together.) While they might not historically have been connected directly to fire; what is a blacksmith without that element? A smith can pound in metal all day but without fire and coals to heat the metal, he'll not have anything but a chunk of cold unharmed metal and bent up tools. so if you want to play connect the dots, fire and Brigid are at least historically indirectly connected. Therefore, the fire stays.

brainstorming for "host of the air" first initial

Today's motto was keep it simple, and that is exactly what happened here. The swoosh of fabric has no discernable iconographic purpose, but it looks cool and solves the question of what to do with the letter d's tail. To give this illumination relevance to Air, Brigid's Cross hangs off the tengwa. Color differentiation will highlight the letter o (the actual capital letter). The fun things about theta (the vowel ... in this case the right hook that is separate) is that when they are the first letter in a piece, the tengwa (the consonant ... in this case the letter that looks like an m with a long tail) has to be illuminated as well. You can't very well write a theta without it's carrier, and a 48pt theta written over a 22pt carrier might be somewhat amiss. Thus, in cases like this, efforts must be taken to emphasize the letter that is really being capitalized whilst illuminating them both.

The misc. grapes and chalice illustrations are ideas for various accent images to be strategically placed around/beside/near the text body. Not so much obscure symbolism, these objects are pulled from/derived directly from the text itself. Known exceptions are the possible fire in the chalice (Too Harry Potter? Darn you Rowling.) and the sheaf of oats (direct symbolism tied to Brigid the goddess and Imbolc).

brainstorming for "hosts of the air" title page

Greetings folks! I haven't picked up the TTP for a couple weeks so it is fantastic to actually have some imagery to share yet again. A good hour + was passed at the pizza parlor early this afternoon. It's amazing how much can get done when forced to leave the house. Add a table made for four (seating just lil' ole' me) to spread papers out on, an endless supply of diet coke, and a pizza buffet of cheesy bread sticks; presto -instant inspiration! Today I tackled the poetic conundrum that is The Host of the Air.

The funny thing about Host of the Air is that it was brought into TTP late in the game as a replacement for Rose of the World. Drawn in by Air's beauty, I felt that surely this was a sensible replacement. Mythological symbolism, possible alchemical symbolism, religious symbolism, people who were other that what they seam- this piece has it all! Funnily enough, this has also been one of the most frustrating poems to brainstorm until today. Perhaps it was the cinnamon sticks or perhaps it was the cheesy bread, but inspiration hit today and it consisted on one key idea ... keep it simple. Host of the Air has so many exciting ideas that, like usual, I wanted to do all of it and ended up finding that this overload was causing me to do nothing at all. Therefore for the title page I focused a few key elements:

1) Brigid the goddess/saint was the woman Yeats refers to as bride and is the subject of this poem.

2) Yeats constantly refers to Bride's dim long hair

3) Brigid the goddess was a goddess of fire (I found this in further reading and will discuss it in some detail later this weekend.)

4) The most recognizable symbol of Brigid the saint is Brigid's Cross. (pictured at end of post)

I then combined all of these into one image that will be sketched on Host of the Air's title page. I have not figured out the placement of the title itself yet, but that will come later. For now here is brainstorm #1 for Air's title page. Along other lines, this was a major breakthrough, because at the moment there is only one other title page sketch - which incidentally is also of a woman. With two of the six transcribed poems being represented by human figures, there clearly is a trend that must continue through the rest of the pieces for continuity sake. We shall see how that works out. For now, enjoy the first Host of the Air title page brainstorm with details. It is clear that there is cleaning up/refiguring that needs doing, but for now I'm thrilled to have this much.

just a quick word

Greeting all! My sincere apologies for not having updated for the last week and a half or so. I am currently (as mentioned previously) in the proofing stages. This means I'm going through my own text with a fine-tooth comb to ensure that I have caught as many mistakes as I can. I'm fairly certain that no venture can be mistake proof, but I like to minimize the existence of mistakes that can be prevented. As a result there is has not been much to say or post in the past few days. Stay tuned because within the nest week I hope to post a number of pages that have been proofed so that you can see what I've been doing.

In the mean time, take a look at LotR section on calligrapher/cartographer/artist Daniel Reeve's website http://www.danielreeve.co.nz/LOTR/ Mr. Reeve is an exceptionally talented man and is responsible for the maps of Middle Earth as found in Jackson's movies, along with calligraphy, other props, and the title menus on the Extended Edition DVDs. He's also done work for Narnia, maps for LotR: Online, King Kong, Underworld: The Rise of the Lycans, etc. A phenomenal site that I highly recommend you check out.

Brigid the goddess and Brigid the saint discussed

Originally this was part of the previous post 'rose' is in and 'air' is out, a mythological angle is discussed this blurb made the entry far too long. to get the full picture have a look-see at the former post to see how this all relates.

What you are about to read is my layman's interpretation of the connection between Brigid the Celtic goddess and St. Brigid the Catholic Saint so please excuse any discrepancies that you might see concerning the aforementioned figures. This is meant largely to inform those subjecting themselves to this blog about the connections that I draw between the two figures. Since I claim "artistic licence" on the mythological angle of The Host of the Air, I deem it only fair that the reasoning behind imagery used in the future be explained now - as I will be drawing from the background of both Brigids. I would love to hear what anyone reading this has to say on the subject. As with every other post on this blog, you do not have to be a member of blogger/Google to comment; and can even post anonymously or with a pseudonym should you so desire.

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Brigid the goddess and Brigid the saint are connected how?

You might wonder why I draw a connection between both the pagan goddess Brigid and the Christian saint Brigid. The answer is simple, for all intents and purposes they are the same. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the ancient celts worshipped a saint, or that the modern Catholic Church revers a celtic goddess. However, at some point in time the two figures were the at least similar. For example, not only do they share the same celebration day, but they are both protector/parton of very similar groups. About four years ago I wrote a paper called Celtic Christianity: St. Patrick, the Druids, and the Saints, which focused on the idea that "the ministry of Saint Patrick, the post Roman world, the Druids, and the mythology surrounding the Celtic Saints all combine to create the basis for what is considered to be the origins of Celtic Christianity." The following is an excerpt from the paper, which directly addresses the "Brigid issue."


Ian Bradley, author of Celtic Christianity and other books concerning the Celts and their culture, states that “the extent to which pre-Christian material was woven into early Celtic Christian literature is fiercely disputed among modern scholars and lies at the heart of the debate between nativists in the field of Celtic studies” (8). While the amount of influence pre-Celtic culture had on Celtic Christianity may be disputed, the fact that it did is indisputable. The influence of Druidic beliefs and Celtic myth on Celtic Christianity is most evident is in what Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, a folklore professor at The University College Dublin, calls “the cult of the saints” (202). As was the practice of the early Catholic Church, customs from pagan regions were often used in forming an area’s “local theology.” Pagan ideals were meshed with Christian ideals in an effort to win over the local populace and assimilate them into the Christian Church. To some extent, Celtic Christianity was no different in Ireland. Wherever “popular practice and belief” were not seen to conflict outright with Christian theology, they were often allowed to continue in slightly different forms (Ó hÓgáin 202). The most obvious example of this is found in the case of the Celtic Saint Brighid (Brigit). Not much actual fact is known about her, but the stories surrounding her existence demonstrate the role that pagan beliefs played in her life - or what the ancients believed her life to have been. Two main conflicting ideas concerning her life are currently recognized. The most referenced of these is found in the 12th century document by Leabhar Breac Of the Life of St. Brigit. Breac recounts that Brigit was the illegitimate daughter of the Irish king Dubthach by his valued bondmaid. Raised by a “wizard” and his consort, she was eventually placed under the watch of a certain Bishop Mél. Later, she was given the rights of a bishop with eight “virgins” under her, in her care (Breac 55, 67). This is the only source I found that cites her as a bishop. Others describe her as an abbotess, but most sources agree that her order resided on land that had once been consecrated for pagan religious purposes. Despite its unusual location, which was possibly the location of an ancient goddess’s temple, Miranda Green, the author of many books concerning Celtic religion, states that St. Brigit’s “convent” was “jointly for women and men” (43). If what Miranda Green asserts about Brigit’s religious establishment is true, than her order defies the conventional ideals of Early Christianity and alludes to the order of the Druids. Druidic priests and priestesses are believed to have worked side by side, while Christian monks and nuns dwelled and worked in separate self-sufficient communities. The celebrated Brigit is also unique in that she shared her name with an ancient goddess. Ó hÓgáin suggests that perhaps she was originally not so celebrated as a saint for her accomplishments, but the original success of her “cult” and the vast numbers of her followers was due to this connection with the pagan deity. He hypothesizes that if she did indeed “Christianize a pagan sanctuary” as legend tells, than to the locals her role as abbotess took on an “aspect of a mother-goddess” (202). Even some Christian writers as late as the 5th century referred to her as “another Mary,” and today she is often called Muire na nGael, or “the Mary of the Irish” (Ó hÓgáin 202).
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My Deductions

My paper from 2004 discussed Brigid the saint from the hypothesized angle of a Druidic priestess who adapted to fit the christian mold as an abbottess. There is certainly research to back up this angle, however, a little bit of reading done in the past couple weeks has made me wonder if the Saint Brigid and the goddess Brigid really aren't just one and the same. They are patrons of the same people groups (well Saint Brigid is patron of many more than my limited information on the goddess reveals), they share the same feast day, they share the same symbols, and all information I could find after a short search had something akin to a see "Saint Brigid/see Brigid, goddess" clause. The Catholic Church has a history of adapting the feast day dates of various pagan religions in order to ease native groups into conversion to Catholicism. If this was done with dates, was to keep it from happening with gods/goddesses or figures of great local significance? This in no way demeans or questions the religious significance of the Saints to the Catholic Church or the holiness attributed them; but with the history of St. Brigid (as written by Leabhar Breac) being questionable at best, who is to say that the Celtic goddess wasn't used as a basis for the saint. It is known that the goddess Brigid was important to the local area and turning her into a saint as part of the local theology would certainly have been a powerful factor in making converts to Celtic Christianity. From this angle, your truely feels justified in using iconography associated with both figures (shared and not) in hosts of the air.

brainstorming for "wandering aengus" first initial #3 & #4

In all the brainstorms for this letter, two elements remain the same - the fish and the berry - the way they are pictured, however, changes. Here are brainstorms #1 & #2 from back in November for reference. Off the bat, it is clear that the following images were influenced by my positive experience with brainstorms #4 & #5 of withering boughs. The string wrapped around the theta (and thus effectively tying the theta and short carrier together) was brought over from the previous images, resulting in a pleasing effect. One element that I wish had been retained from brainstorm #2 was the use of a star for the theta. the star would bring the alchemical references back into the illumination and make the image more interesting without causing it to become overworked.

Brainstorm #3 is a bit same 'ole same 'ole and comes across rather uninspired as it really is just a new arrangement for the fish than in previous initials.

#4, however, has something going for it. The string carries on beyond the traditional confines of the letter (which is rather short in stature) and is rather pleasing a result. While I like the two fish, the idea of two fish has nothing to do with the poem and will therefore be nixed. Instead think of it as a study of the fish's position (sketching with pen does have it's downsides) as I was unable to erase the first fish.

The second image and the last images are skeches playing around with the way tha tthe string wraps around the theta and different fish styles.

brainstorming for "stolen child" first initial #2

The following image is a simplified version of brainstorm #1 which was posted back in November. All the elements were retained (fey, basket of berries, plants), but this time around they were simplified and rearranged for what I believe to be a more appealing image. Take a look for yourself an see what you think.

brainstorming for "stolen child" and "wandering aengus"

Alright everyone, I am terribly ashamed that I did not have this up sooner as it has been floating around my house for almost a week. Below is a page of doodles created earlier this past week when I began to sit in on history lectures in prep for grad school. Doodling enhances the listening process and below is one of many pages that resulted. Letter close ups are given their own entry for commentary sake.

A number of things are going on currently behind the scenes of TTP. Proof reading transcriptions has commenced yet again (not a whole lot to post there, but I just might post a few pages that are bleeding so that you can get an exaggerated look at the proofing process) and images are still mulling in my head as pictures for title pages try to come together (you'll see results when something is actually down on paper). In unrelated news, yours truly is pulling together the beginnings of an Etsy shop and will announce when it opens.

time invested in "TTP"

About a month ago I promised myself that I would start recording the amount of time it took me to do everything in this project so that in the end I could say that i took ### man hours to complete. This evening as I finished transcribing the postscript I realized that I still have yet to record anything. Thee some things I can pretty accurately guess For instance:

- The postscript took 3hours to write (because I had to actually put my process down on paper and was cross referencing to make sure the information I was writing was correct)
- The postscript took 4 hours to transcribe because I had to continually edit the information in my head
- "Host of the Air" took 3 hours to transcribe and 1 hour to find
- I have spent about 13 hours dreaming up illuminated letters and other illustrations (you don't see all the spectacular epic fails).
- 15 hours (if not more) searching for and identifying alchemical imagery in the texts
- About 10 hours finding the correct texts to begin with (I'm pretty picky)

That all adds up to 30 minutes shy of 50 hours.

If you consider that each of the poems transcribed took between 2 and 3.5 hours each to transcribe and about 30 minutes to proof read you can add in another 21 hours on average making the total roughly 71 hours. Then factor in a good 20 hours of semi-extraneous research on my part concerning topical information and art materials, and the total swells to an estimated 91 hours. Id' say when all is said and done, A good 100 hours have been invested so far in this version of the project. I say this version b/c I have gone through the text choosing and transcription process two and a half times prior to settling on William Butler Yeats. At this moment I'm afraid to think about the amount of time invested in this piece, counting those two and a half failed attempts.

Sometimes I'm a little sad inside to think that I'm investing all this time, and yet the work will result in only one singular hand bound volume. However, what a fantastic singular volume it will be.

postscript transcription

Well this monster is finally transcribed - the postscript! It is an abbreviated version of the TTP post back in Nov 08 entitled transcription - the method to my madness . Let it be known that I do sense the great irony of the explanatory text being transcribed - after all if you can't read tengwar than you won't be able to read the explanatory text. However, I figure that if you can't read tengwar to start with, than the postscript really won't matter much in the end anyways as the majority of it explains conflicts i ran into and how I solved the problem. Before you scroll further down and look at the pictures, let me point out that I'm well aware of transcription errors in this text from the get-go. For about a page in a half, my mind transcribed "w+o" as if it was "o+w" and completely forgot that there is a special symbol for the word "of." I'm sure there are a couple others, for instance I think that a couple of my "g"s look like "j"s or possibly "b"s (The "b" is a "g" just flip flopped over a y-axis), but all of this will be corrected once I go back and proofread. In the meantime enjoy the scribblings below!

"the host of the air" transcription

Happy New Years all! Yours truly is starting the year out in style with a brand new transcription of the latest TTP poem The Host of the Air. All five pages are posted below. I would apologize for the scribbles and self editing marks; but it's really all part of the process, so take a moment to revel in its rough draft qualities.

With the holiday season finished until April (Valentine's Day doesn't really count), be looking for posts to be up once again at fairly regular intervals. I used the French Paper, Parchetone "Natural" #1046, 80lb text that TTP will be written on for various Christmas presents this year. The only word for this paper is luxurious. The pen and pencil slide over it as effortlessly as a knife cutting through room-temperature butter. It was a real treat, and I even indulged myself by creating a mock booklet and flipping through the pages to see how the experience felt. It was incredible. Yours truly absolutely can not wait to begin work on TTP's final form, so that the paper can be put to good use!