3 September 2007

The Celibacy Goddess

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Iris, holding her gaze in the oval mirror. Photo by Eric Francis.

PHOTOGRAPHS are not reality; they are the symbol of reality. Yet they create a “reality” of their own. Alice A. Bailey says many times in her writing that there is an entire dimension of [non]existence which we could call glamour. We think of glamour as being something good, or fun, or beautiful—as in glamourous, how wonderful!

The thing about glamour is that it has a certain, well, the word often used is allure…yet we know it’s not real. Photography is often involved.

Bailey describes what we think of as glamour as being a reduced form of a much larger problem: we create a fake world, and then we try to live in it. She calls this the “world glamour,” the creation of an entire sphere of [non]reality that includes the media, much of what we think and much of what our senses perceive, and which has no grounding in reality.

To see this in action, make art—and to some degree, succeed well enough to know you have created an alternate reality: an image that was not there before, a character that did not exist, a scenario that takes on a life of its own.

The thing about art is that it’s either done with very focused intention (I tend to trust artists inherently, because they live to focus beauty), or it is done in a process of surrender that brings one into contact with one’s creative core; and this, too, is supremely trustworthy. In these situations, alternative realities can be a lot of fun and teach us an enormous amount about ourselves, and show us how to see life a new way. Alternative realities can teach us to create reality.

We don’t often use our creative power to make the world we actually want, or even the one we need—rather, we typically create a kind of grey astral world (of polarized emotions, for example, a hallmark of the astral plane) that we don’t quite want (but seem to be hooked into). We can create whatever we want; all it takes for something to happen is enough people to decide it’s going to happen, and sometimes that means just one or two.

We have another issue entirely when the power of art is turned to greed or deception. It loses none of its force, indeed, it seems to focus energy and reach us as deeply or more deeply. It turns out that “glamour” is part of this process—making evil things look good, for example, or exposing people to beauty so that you can sell them what they don’t want or need.

Glamour is typically a world of unfilfilled desires, fantasy projections we are often too scared to experiment with in reality, or too embarrassed to admit. Yet it reminds us, in a backwards way, that we have the capacity to create and imagine, if we notice what we are doing.

I think this is the most glamourous photo I have ever taken. I had no plans of making it that way; I don’t even remember the shot, specifically—it’s one of a series. Yet clearly something comes through, or rather someone, Goddess-like. I keep getting the feeling of Athena. In that sense, it’s not glamour we are seeing here, but rather a glimpse of the Goddess-essence carried in that moment by one woman. Or perhaps that is glamour.

She who is depected here is morphing into a fictional character, based on her inaccessibility: the Celibacy Goddess. She doesn’t have a name, but she has a feeling. The cool athenian gaze and face that to me seems so Greek, that is the face that you don’t get to see cumming for you.

To me, she is a ritualistic mirror in which I must stand alone, and acknowledge at least the potential that no act of sexual communion can give me the self-completion I seek when I look into her face. And in a way, her flawless female reflection is the symbol of that completion as it already exists within me, if I can reach the point where I feel as inwardly beautiful as she appears in sensorium.

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