The potter sits upon the stool facing the table. In the centre, on the turntable sits a sterile mound of clay before her, shapeless, formless, lifeless. A deathly silence pervades the room. Barefooted, virgin while sleeves layered back upon themselves, she begins her craft.
Heel, toe rest lightly upon the metal wheel, finding her grip, her starting position. As if matter suddenly entered the deathless void, she penetrates the atmosphere, her movements creating charged ions, electric currents charge the air. Delicately reaching into the bowl of tepid water beside her she cups a handful of its contents and ladles it around the clay. Memory skin pushes against the wheel spinning it with a kinetic force of precision, and with a creak of remembrance, the turntable starts its dance.
With the grace of a Ti-chi practitioner, her hands glide aside the clay, fingertips delicately encouraging the lumpen clay to transform into something new. Feet, hands and fingers move in rhythmic motion and coordination the melding the creation to her will and desire, a pattern she holds within her mind.
Soon there is no clay, there is no shaper of the clay, there is only one, a Zen like state achieved by the repetition without thought. To some this may be the perfect realized state, that oneness that unity of craft and crafter, the outcome of which is a unique object, with intricate patterns which could not have been realised without this state of lucidity.
But the crafter, she knows a deeper realization can be obtained, is possible a Zen of Zen’s one might say. A thought, a welcome and an offering of love, an incantation, an act of majik and invitation to the larger, non- corporal mystical higher self to enter her auric field and her vibration.
This fusion of self and self, a seeming contradiction, but a reality nonetheless, provides deeper insight, deeper clarity a honing of the craft that is almost magikal in its unfolding. Her actions and thoughts guided by her most perfectly realized self, she blindfolds her beautifully intense eyes; yielding her will becoming no longer conscious of the need to actively work the clay that spins before her.
Hands move at unnatural angles, fingertips alight the clay with the grace of a swan landing on water. They graze and shape the golem of clay at seemingly random intervals before taking flight again leaving unfinished etchings.
Ethereal hands fill the vacuum created with clockwork precision, and with pinpoint accuracy continue the working again veering off at jarring points to a hypothetical observer. Once again unseeing, unthinking, she resumes her mantle, making connections betwixt the two indelible markings.
This… state of unified consciousness proceeds for some time, unremitting until we see. An elaborate bowl had been birthed from the clay golem. Patterns adorn the circular side of the object. Pretty they seem to the casual eye cast over, but to discerning discriminating eye, patterns within patterns. To those who may make it a lifetime study, these intricacies… appear to speak to them. An indecipherable language that may bestow a message. To others these patterns are a form of unknowable hieroglyphics, they tell a story yet to be unravelled. To yet another otherworldly animals and plant matter are drawn into object.
All agree though, that when the object is spun at the right rotation, the patterns come alive and move of their own accord, a soundless carousel perhaps. All agree on technological divination They test and probe, deduce and theorise, devise mathematical formulae to crack the nut. All fail.
But I guard the secret, I have the key. It was given to me by her. I remember so well as she stood before me, her preternatural beauty emanated from within and her intense gaze affixed me where I stood as she examined the purity of my soul. One word she uttered, one word only, the rest left unsaid, un-needed, for I understood more in that moment than if a thousand encyclopaedia’s were filled with words to convey that same concept..
These is only the word LOVE written unpon the bowl, all else leads to dead ends. But this mystery is so simple and uncomplicated , that it is overlooked by those who make hard work of light things The object is an archtypical repersentation of human consciousness, passing over and dismissing the most natural of concepts for ego driven ideas that they know better! I tell this freely to those that have ears, so that that may listen .
As for her, the potter, I never saw her again. I imagine she sits at her wheel now beginning anew, fashioning a new story to gift to the world. But who knows?
All begins and ends in mystery..
Heading art: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/in-the-potters-hands-eloise-schneider-mote.html
The Spirit Channel 