The Manuscripts
Musings and wanderings on art and fragrance
On Resonance
even objects that appear to be stationary are in fact vibrating, oscillating, resonating at various frequencies. All matter is ultimately just vibrations of underlying fields. Everything in life is vibration.
Tam Hunt
The Lost Fragrance Ritual
There’s an ancient Indian fable about a king struggling to pick a successor from his identical sons. He gave them each a few gold coins and asked them each to fill a room. The first filled his with hay, the second with stones and soil, but the third son sat quietly. The King was outraged by the mess the first two sons created. When he reached the room of the third son, there was nothing but incense burning in the center of the room. The air filled with smoke, enveloping the King in wisdom and clarity. His choice was clear.
Zukoh, or Zu-koh, has a beautifully long and storied past. Called “a perfume to be painted'“, Zukoh spread with Buddhism, often used as a way to purify and bring clarity. Botanicals and pine resins are finely powdered and spread onto the skin and clothes. The rubbing incense can be used both on the skin and can also be burned.
Our version is the high desert counterpart to this Eastern ritual. Made up of pure desert botanicals, our rubbing incense captures the feeling of walking though a pigmented canyon of the American West.
Dante’s Underworld
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straight-forward pathway had been lost
Take a drive in the middle of New Mexico, on the way to the mysterious Chaco Canyon, and you will drop off of a mesa spiraling down into what feels like the underworld. The landscape becomes dark. Layers of grey, black, white and red begin to overwhelm your vision. If you drop into this landscape you will see reminders of time, but deep time. Petrified wood is sprinkled on top of layers of rock stratification.
When I walk through this landscape I feel as if Virgil himself grabs my hand. The reddish bands of color morph into rivers of blood, where souls are held with judgement. This exploration brought me to one of my favorite heroines, Mary Evershed, who studied the astronomical references in Dante.
She is one of those women who chose the path of passion and exploration, rather than the life of a mother. It brings up the question? How can a woman have the audacity to choose the life she wants?
Archeology rocks
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Archeology rocks *
I pay quite a bit of attention to rocks. They are the star, the leading role, in my Earth Auras series. Usually I look for layers of colored bands, or rock strata, to create these, but I am also rather fascinated by another kind of rock related inspiration.
Cyclopean and polygonal ancient rock construction is one of the great mysteries of ancient architecture. When I’m in Greece I like to spend time sketching these megalithic stones and contemplate how heroic human creativity dreamed up these massive arrangements of rocks.
Recently I visited the Pyramid of Ellinikon, a mysterious structure in the Argolis that defies dating. Some believe it exists from the time the Great Pyramids in Egypt were being build, some believe it is more contemporaneous with the building of the Parthenon. Either way, it is amazing to study in person.
