Book Report of Sorts
Mar. 15th, 2011 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perzephone
I've been at an extremely low point lately, to the point where I can't even write about it with any depth. I need to, I should, but I just fucking can't.
So I read, and embroider, and play WoW, but it's patch/maintenance day for Azeroth.
Aside from nomming some tasty zombie short stories (The Living Dead, edited by John Joseph Adams), I've picked up The Temple of Twelve: Novice of Colors by Esmerelda Little Flame. I've read one person's personal pathworking through it, a few reviews and other random stuff on the 'Net about it. It seems to be good for helping folks open up to their artistic side, and since my embroidery is technically 'creative', I figured, eh, why not. There is a lot of color symbolism in the Tarot itself, and since I'm already pathworking with that, I had kind of hoped that TToT would add some vibrance.
I get irritated sometimes when people on the Pagan forums or in chats & what-not regarding magic(k)al work tell someone "oh, colors mean whatever you want them to mean" or "colors mean different things to different people". Yes, personally, colors can be pleasing or displeasing to various people, or remind people of different things that have happened during the course of their lives... but magic(k)ally speaking, colors mean what they mean, and have always meant. It's one thing if you want to use, say, a pale blue candle to represent yourself and a flaming orange candle to represent the object of your desire. That's personal symbolism. But, generally, the planetary daemon of Venus is not going to look kindly on your blue and orange candles, just because they make you personally think of loooooovve.
Why can't you take the New Age road with colors? Why can't they just mean whatever the fuck you want them to mean, thousands of years of symbolism be damned?
Because they vibrate at various frequencies and do different things for different reasons. Lenses and refractors and prisms produce singular colored rays or rainbows, with the colors in a specific order, for a reason, not because it's some random thing created by dysenteric unicorns. I don't feel assed to go into the scientific reasons why yellow is yellow and blue is blue (this is my blog, I don't need references, dammit) but there are definite reasons - and because our brain is a science-type thing as well, different parts of our brains respond to different colors the same way as anyone else's brain responds to those same colors (try to eat rare meat under a blue light f'instance... go ahead. I'm waiting - and then try it under natural to slightly reddish light).
So, old-fashioned witch rant aside, I'm kind of put off by The Temple of Twelve, and I'm not that deep in. For one, the main character is extremely enthusiastic, to the point of having exaggerated anime-like emotional responses to everything. She's a 16-year-old girl, too, and by that age most girls have grown out of that starry-eyed jumping-for-joy Disneylandish reaction to absolutely everything that happens to or around them. Not to mention the abject fawning over absolutely every person she meets.
The other thing comes from a purely magic(k)al point of view. Ok, she's a priestess-in-training, in a 'school' of sorts, one that probably does protect its students from exploitation by other students and faculty. However, in her second month in training, she's basically pushed into a relationship with another student that she's never met, in what is going to be an arranged marriage. He gives her a gift which allows him to telepathically communicate with her.
That gave me a serious pause. Maybe it's just me. Even though I began my magic(k)al career long before Harry Potter came out, a lot of my earliest studies were in 'psychic self-defense' and 'protection from the Dark Arts'. I mean, if you're going to learn how to summon spiritual entities that may not have the summoner's best interests at heart, and if you're also learning poisons and curses and hexes (ohhh my!), you're going to want to know how to defend yourself from the same stuff. Granted, I haven't made it very deep into the book, so I don't know what kind of universe the writer is building around her main character, but the book is kind of geared towards a younger audience (or at least it reads that way), and to have a young girl rather magnaminously accept some random guy as her partner/consort/betrothed, and accept a gift with that kind of rider on it just bothers me. As long as she wears the gift (and she's encouraged strongly to do so) this guy can peek into her mind any damned time he wants.
It's unethical, dangerous and the kind of stuff Silver Ravenwolf would get reamed about.
I'm going to seriously try to finish the book, especially since during my rant I realized that yes, at some level, even though I'm not a visual artist (or any type of artist) colors are important to me. They do speak to the inner witch, even though I don't do magic(k) any more. I've got synaesthesia to some degree, and I do love my colorin' books. I keep telling people that embroidery is 'coloring with thread'... so, there you have it.
It's only mid-March & we're already in the 80s. With the a/c already on. Fuuuuuuuuuuu....
So I read, and embroider, and play WoW, but it's patch/maintenance day for Azeroth.
Aside from nomming some tasty zombie short stories (The Living Dead, edited by John Joseph Adams), I've picked up The Temple of Twelve: Novice of Colors by Esmerelda Little Flame. I've read one person's personal pathworking through it, a few reviews and other random stuff on the 'Net about it. It seems to be good for helping folks open up to their artistic side, and since my embroidery is technically 'creative', I figured, eh, why not. There is a lot of color symbolism in the Tarot itself, and since I'm already pathworking with that, I had kind of hoped that TToT would add some vibrance.
I get irritated sometimes when people on the Pagan forums or in chats & what-not regarding magic(k)al work tell someone "oh, colors mean whatever you want them to mean" or "colors mean different things to different people". Yes, personally, colors can be pleasing or displeasing to various people, or remind people of different things that have happened during the course of their lives... but magic(k)ally speaking, colors mean what they mean, and have always meant. It's one thing if you want to use, say, a pale blue candle to represent yourself and a flaming orange candle to represent the object of your desire. That's personal symbolism. But, generally, the planetary daemon of Venus is not going to look kindly on your blue and orange candles, just because they make you personally think of loooooovve.
Why can't you take the New Age road with colors? Why can't they just mean whatever the fuck you want them to mean, thousands of years of symbolism be damned?
Because they vibrate at various frequencies and do different things for different reasons. Lenses and refractors and prisms produce singular colored rays or rainbows, with the colors in a specific order, for a reason, not because it's some random thing created by dysenteric unicorns. I don't feel assed to go into the scientific reasons why yellow is yellow and blue is blue (this is my blog, I don't need references, dammit) but there are definite reasons - and because our brain is a science-type thing as well, different parts of our brains respond to different colors the same way as anyone else's brain responds to those same colors (try to eat rare meat under a blue light f'instance... go ahead. I'm waiting - and then try it under natural to slightly reddish light).
So, old-fashioned witch rant aside, I'm kind of put off by The Temple of Twelve, and I'm not that deep in. For one, the main character is extremely enthusiastic, to the point of having exaggerated anime-like emotional responses to everything. She's a 16-year-old girl, too, and by that age most girls have grown out of that starry-eyed jumping-for-joy Disneylandish reaction to absolutely everything that happens to or around them. Not to mention the abject fawning over absolutely every person she meets.
The other thing comes from a purely magic(k)al point of view. Ok, she's a priestess-in-training, in a 'school' of sorts, one that probably does protect its students from exploitation by other students and faculty. However, in her second month in training, she's basically pushed into a relationship with another student that she's never met, in what is going to be an arranged marriage. He gives her a gift which allows him to telepathically communicate with her.
That gave me a serious pause. Maybe it's just me. Even though I began my magic(k)al career long before Harry Potter came out, a lot of my earliest studies were in 'psychic self-defense' and 'protection from the Dark Arts'. I mean, if you're going to learn how to summon spiritual entities that may not have the summoner's best interests at heart, and if you're also learning poisons and curses and hexes (ohhh my!), you're going to want to know how to defend yourself from the same stuff. Granted, I haven't made it very deep into the book, so I don't know what kind of universe the writer is building around her main character, but the book is kind of geared towards a younger audience (or at least it reads that way), and to have a young girl rather magnaminously accept some random guy as her partner/consort/betrothed, and accept a gift with that kind of rider on it just bothers me. As long as she wears the gift (and she's encouraged strongly to do so) this guy can peek into her mind any damned time he wants.
It's unethical, dangerous and the kind of stuff Silver Ravenwolf would get reamed about.
I'm going to seriously try to finish the book, especially since during my rant I realized that yes, at some level, even though I'm not a visual artist (or any type of artist) colors are important to me. They do speak to the inner witch, even though I don't do magic(k) any more. I've got synaesthesia to some degree, and I do love my colorin' books. I keep telling people that embroidery is 'coloring with thread'... so, there you have it.
It's only mid-March & we're already in the 80s. With the a/c already on. Fuuuuuuuuuuu....
no subject
Date: 2011-03-15 10:31 pm (UTC)Exuberantly OK So Far
Date: 2011-03-21 11:22 am (UTC)What's funny is that I also see a lot of you, Pia, in this book - always having other people demanding your spiritual time via your art, and seeming to leave so little for yourself. The cycles of how you get caught up in life & your art to the detriment of your mental health. You probably already see that, though, right? ;)
Re: Exuberantly OK So Far
Date: 2011-03-21 11:24 am (UTC)On the other hand, I hadn't thought of it that way - about people demanding my spiritual time and me leaving nothing for myself; that is absolutely true. It's absolutely true right this second. :/ I've never found an easy solution between spiritual artwork + making money + resting meaningfully/healthfully.
I've sucked at it the past two months!
Selective Blindness
Date: 2011-03-21 02:40 pm (UTC)See, it was so blaringly obvious to me, I was thinking that's why you invested into the book in the first place. Bwahahaha!
Re: Selective Blindness
Date: 2011-03-22 01:00 am (UTC)