Duality - a photo on Flickriver

Duality

if you were to search
for the Minoan Goddess
where would you begin

It is common to think of ancient wild bristlecones in terms of bonsai - the natural perceived as the converse of the contrived (only bigger), the ineffable perceived as the material.

Bonsai is a Japanese term dating from the early 19th century. Penjing, the Chinese term and practice, preceded it by two-thousand years. Penjing became popular during uncertain, socially tumultuous, times when people yearned to return to, or reconnect to, nature. Where that was not possible, they brought nature to themselves by collecting wild trees and cultivating them at home. Eventually, a long period of social stability returned, and penjing begin to flourish as a popular art form. By that time, as these things inevitably go, the wild trees were all but gone. Yet demand remained, and was met by the development of methods of mass cultivation.

To this day, penjing trees with a wild pedigree are coveted and treasured above all others by aficionados - a kind of lust being in place, there is, no doubt, a black market. The wild bristlecone pictured here is less than a foot tall and is probably over one-hundred years old - the oldest cultivated bonsai being about five-hundred years. Of classic penjing/bonsai proportion and style, this bristlecone has been shaped only by the raw elements. It is the epitome of wild...yet, vulnerable - a price always on its figurative head.

As penjing evolved into an art form, rules were developed. The rules were meant to show the way to an aesthetic, contemplative, balance and focus. Penjing was - and is - not meant to be a cute, saccharine, miniature of nature, but a harmonious connection to the deepest Jungian archetypes of the natural world. These rules take the form of opposites - dualities - in simple, asymmetric, equilibrium - each a potential complementary unity:
Denseness/Sparseness
Roughness/Meticulousness
Firmness/Gentleness
Heaviness/Lightness
Substance/Emptiness
Boldness/Restraint
Scene/Emotion
Individuality/Entity
Dominance/Subordination
(In this relatively recent era of the Patriarchy, all of these rules are easily misunderstood as irreconcilable dualities - subsets of Masculine/Feminine, Us/Them - not, as intended, the infinite continuum of transcendant Yin/Yang.)

In the elemental structure of penjing, rock is skeleton, water is blood, and tree (or trees) flesh. Penjing strives for a tree that has the austerity, frugality, and rugged simplicity resultant from hardship and struggle. Bonsai, more sensuous and rhythmic, can possess the delicate musicality of fractals or windchimes. Like all material art, both are meant to open a way to the esoteric, nonverbal, perceptions and workings of the inner, individual, human mind - a silent place of subtle silhouette and shadow. There is, in other words, an intent that transcends intent - the suggestion of a harmonious unity of the conscious and the subconscious. To describe or ascribe any meaning of art to others is, in many ways, to miss this point, and can become a form of subjugation. If language were a complete tool, there would be no need for art. But because language is not complete, the totality of your perceptions is yours...and yours alone.

Add exuberant and nurturing wild Nature to this mix, and you may end up, in the sleepy morning light of an ancient bristlecone grove, with a transient, elusive, image of a Minoan Earth-Mother Goddess, sacred serpent of rebirth and all creation in her hand - a direct descendent of peaceful goddess cultures many thousands of years old. The Divine Feminine - now but a seeming shadow - greeting yet the sun's return, until all days shall end...

Sometimes it can seem as if Nature is trying to remind us of something we still understand, but cannot articulate.

Taken on: January 1, 2017

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