initiation and thinking along the thread ...

Re initiation ... I have written an essay on Alice in Wonderland as a theorist of initiations, and here, the text itself is initiatory as well ... its called Inside Alice's Facets also this one on making which is also from the point of 'being in' initiation .... Grappled steps in the making ... and here's another one, Whoppers at Jouissant Play

Ariadne

Translations of original texts on her here ...

Good outline here ...

Plutarch, in his vita of Theseus, which treats him as a historical individual, reports that in the Naxos of his day, an earthly Ariadne was separate from a celestial one:

"Some of the Naxians also have a story of their own, that there were two Minoses and two Ariadnes, one of whom, they say, was married to Dionysos in Naxos and bore him Staphylos and his brother, and the other, of a later time, having been carried off by Theseus and then abandoned by him, came to Naxos, accompanied by a nurse named Korkyne, whose tomb they show; and that this Ariadne also died there."

Ariadne's thread

'Ariadne's thread, named for the legend of Ariadne, is the term used to describe the solving of a problem with multiple apparent means of proceeding - such as a physical maze, a logic puzzle, or an ethical dilemma - through an exhaustive application of logic to all available routes. It is the particular method used that is able to follow completely through to trace steps or take point by point a series of found truths in a contingent, ordered search that reaches a desired end position. This process can take the form of a mental record, a physical marking, or even a philosophical debate; it is the process itself that assumes the name.' wiki quote

Below are images from a collaborative project done in  2008 with Mela Fitzgibon and Susan Buret and myself  making   'the thread' ... all phrases, words,  sentences, notions, questions etc,  intuitively arose from the making and were stitched by hand,  The thread was made in parts and the parts were swapped between us  so that we picked up where each other had left off ... then the whole was stitched together ... it is very very long.


excert of thread ...

'... umbilical thread cut red rosso rouge . . . changing place changing time changing thoughts changing future tu moi manqué cloud threads tenuous hold aloft await clockwise re-arrive ----- undertow drags and swallows envelop me now whispering low to the lavender dusk sky remembered  weighing time too lightly shines from the mirror smeared . . . reflected secrets  oh blissful oblivion life on its way returns to a mist, its quickness is its quietness again : existence of this world of things and men renews their never needing to exist in emptiness . . . oh me oh my sigh lightly leaving perfumed trails musk frankincense and amber ~ haunting forgetful minds * threading mystic messages silenced tongues wagging truths and lil’ white lies unravel knots deceitful promises sing a mournful song in muffled tones her sorrow bleeds from flesh and heart alike euphoric blessing washing over pain memory fall in light entering flesh raw red wet space within holding stuck releasing heat shrouded in white sheet...'

by Majena Mafe
spinning the thread from the throat

Villa of the Mysteries, Dionysian Chamber
Pompeii Italy

Mount Vesuvius, Italy
(dormant volcano with a highly volatile history)


Red, as the colour of light,
was an important element of the interiors
of Roman religious buildings.

(John Gage, Color & Culture, 1993, p. 25).

James Turrell's Catso Red
Permanent installation at the Mattress Factory.

Roden Crater,
(dormant volcano in the Painted Desert, Arizona
and site for James Turrell's Roden Crater Project)

Other initiation stories ... to be added to

Red riding hood
Alice in wonderland goldilox and the three bears
Inanna  story

the cube thats not a cube

 

 ... we can remember here, that we are dealing with metaphorical and ritual space, and 'sacred space' in this  initiation 'event' which is probably not space at all ...  the cube has transparent walls,  things come in and pass through them going out. Our engaging with this here villa space. ('space' durrr words ...) can be post- dimensional...

 Lets just take it for granted that the fourth dimension here is not Einstein's ('time') but a space of immersion and dissolution, of the self and language, and that geometries and syntax's are the only pattern tracings of our limits of  understanding engagement ...

I'll write more soon ...