As the crow flies

Here’s the beginning of the next project. It’s a six by eight foot panel with a gold leafed  canvas laid down onto it. 

 

 

If you’ve been watching the blog for any length of time you’ll know that I’ve been getting a bit fanatical about crows and ravens. Here’s the panel that I’m going to start with, watch the birds appearing in the next few days. I need to get this ready for the show at Channel Islands: a week and a half to go!

In alchemy the crow is symbolic of the beginning of an alchemist’s spiritual journey. Here’s a passage from Adam McLean’s article about the birds found in alchemical symbolism:

“The Black Crow, sometimes also the Raven, is the beginning of the great work of soul alchemy. This indicates the initial stages of the alchemist’s encounter with his inner space, through withdrawing from the outer world of the senses in meditation, and entering what is initially the dark inner world of the soul. Thus this stage is also described in alchemical texts as the blackening, the nigredo experience, and it is often pictured as a death process, as in the caput mortuum, the deaths head, or as some alchemical illustrations show, the alchemist dying within a flask. Thus in the symbol of the Black Crow we have the stepping out in consciousness from the world of the physical senses the restrictions that bind us to the physical body.” 

(McLean, Adam. 1979. “The Birds in Alchemy” in The Hermetic Journal Issue 5.)