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Athanor Arts

Athanor is an old English word for the alchemical furnace which holds a steady state of heat for the transformation of a base metal to its purer form. I think of myself as an athanor—a steady source of both challenge and support and an inspiration for others to do their creative “work” of soul home-coming and inspired expression. Though my website is out of date, it gives an overview of the soul-full/spirited mentoring I offer to the world. Expressive Arts have been my passion for thirty years, and Ecstatic Wisdom Postures for nearly twenty. I started a group for Ecstatic Postures here on the Consortium. Please check it out and join if it catches your interest. Spring seems like a perfect time to open more doors to the mythic realms and Postures as a spiritual practice is a profoundly surprising and reliable key AND best of all connects us to our ancient ancestors.

The land began singing me nearly thirty years ago. I didn't know what it was when it first began but the energy, the pressure in my body and head were so great as I stood in certain places that the only release was to give forth sound. Over the last decade that sound, those songs have become useful to the people, not just the spirits of place. So I have come to call it BodySinging and have found ways to "teach" it. A post named BodySinging below describes the ecstatic aliveness of it.

My website - www.athanorarts.com -will also give you a few more art images to see. Don’t forget to click on the thumbnails so you can see the accompanying poetry/prose..

My own athanor, my touchstone for re-membering who I really am, is the tree. Any tree but especially the cedars which make their homes both here in the Pacific Northwest where I currently live and in Montana where I lived and was “reborn” over and over again for the last thirty years. A long time ago, in another lifetime it seems, I lived in Pennsylvania, where I don’t remember coniferous trees as much as I remember the tulip trees, the dogwoods, the peach and the elm and the maple, and most especially the weeping willow in the backyard. That particular tree befriended me when I was eight or so, when I scrambled up her trunk to escape my parents' arguing. She allowed me to cling safely to her uppermost branches as a thunderstorm tossed the trunk back and forth and I heard her keening along with me.

I have started a blog here on the Consortium. Look for it below. I look forward to hearing from lots of you.