Spiralling: Part III

Soul Journeying Portrayed in Baskets and Poems

Mar 10, 2025

Revisiting my Spiralling book, finding it deeply simple and timeless in its beginnings/endings/beginnings, is now launching me into exploring space. With a Mona Lisa smile.

Here’s the third and final part of Spiralling: Soul Journeying Portrayed in Baskets and Poems.

Parts I and II can be found here and here.

7. GROUNDING IS THE RESURRECTION OF THE GREEN-EYED SERPENT [2008]

Type: Coiled basket, irregular stitch, 30 stitches per inch

Dimensions: 3" diameter, 1" height

Materials: Raffia, cattails

Time: 45 hours

Dyes: Madder, cochineal, dahlia, osage orange, onion skin, carrot top, indigo, alkanet, padouk, brazilwood, sandalwood, logwood

Pattern: The eye of the serpent is the centre of the basket as the serpent coils upward from the root chakra through rows of succeeding chakras to a rainbow of colour at its rim.

This basket grounds ascension and facilitates chakra toning.

Firings and Fallings

I couldn't have known
that all the firings and fallings
would lie so quietly,
gathered in a wide slow assiduous sweep
joining all that has gone before and after
to proclaim what endures now,
constant and mutable.

0:00

-0:36

Gratitude

At the moment when
I give thanks for the dance of my life,
for my entire shining and spattered piecework
of encounters and engagements,

At the moment when
I salute the particular course of
my own fibres and patternings,

At that moment
I am a body of light in open space,
substantial and weightless.

0:00

-0:42

8. THE GALACTIC BUTTERFLY [2009-10]

Type: Coiled basket, irregular stitch, 35 stitches per inch

Dimensions: 9" diameter, 1" height

Materials: Raffia, cattails

Time: 172 hours

Dyes: Indigo, marigold

Pattern: A blanket pattern of Toltec or Zapatec weavers, this Galactic Butterfly design was popularized by Jose Arguelles' The Mayan Factor [1987] in which he labelled this pattern as Hunab K'u: One Giver of Movement and Measure. The traditional Mayan teacher Hunbatz Men describes Hunab K'u as "a unity with humans and all things of nature, expressed in terms of a mathematical component: the measure of the soul and the movement of the energy that is spirit--the universal dynamism that stimulates and motivates life in its manifestation of spirit and matter; the principle of intelligent energy that pervades the entire universe, animate or inanimate. He notes that Hunab K'u is "the heart of all beings and each of us is connected through our hearts." Geometrically represented, Hunab K'u is the joining of the circle and the square.

Full Moon in Scorpio
June 7, 2009

I have blood on my hands,
from moments of malice
and neglect
and forcing
and sneaking out and away,
abandoning.

There--it's claimed.
The breath deepens, slows.
The air hums.

This voicing illumines the throat,
sings gratitude,
opens and opens.....

0:00

-0:57

Full Moon
November 21, 2010

Time is no enemy
though the human body
measures out time
toward death.

The soul,
light and intense as a butterfly,
wings through and throughout
time,
endlessly.

0:00

-0:34

9. SPIRALLING THROUGH [2011]

Type: Coiled basket sculpture, figure eight stitch, 30 stitches per inch

Dimensions: 6" length/height, 6 1/2" width/diameters

Materials: Raffia, round reed

Time: 144 hours

Pattern: Inspired by Itzhak Bentov’s diagram of a black hole as an old universe that emerges in a white hole as a new universe, this basket sculpture was completed on 7/9/11, just past the midpoint of the Ninth Wave, the final era of the Mayan Calendar. ‘Spiralling Through’ speaks to cosmobiological principles of transmutation of energy, highlighting eternal motion through three sets of nine spiralling stair steps on each side. It was a discovery to realize that when the sculpture is rolling, its contrasting spirals form a figure eight pattern, symbol of infinity.

Initiation As One’s Destiny

When that which once was vital
wanes into shadows,
it is a summons to the crossroads
to bow and open your heart.

Empty yourself of past glories.
Send them like honoured elders on blazing pyres headed home to the sea.
Acknowledge your gratitude.
Keep only your transmuted, timeless brilliance.

Begin again.

In the light of your soul,
ready for communion.

0:00

-0:58

Emerging

[In honour of Mohamed Bouazizi [1984-2010]
and all the others dead and alive who are
fighting for freedom]

A young life, self-immolated,
set aflame
the hearts of desert peoples
and leapt
across oceans.

We are one.
Despite horrors and hatreds and
betrayals and fears.
We are one,
revolving again
through greed and deception
to remember the power
and dignity and sanctity of each one of us.

We are forest fires,
burnt out above ground,
but alive still in the patient earth,
refusing to be extinguished,
finding ways through and out.