IMELDA ALMQVIST ART: JOURNEYS TO OTHER WORLDS, INNER WORLDS AND AROUND THE WORLD IN PAINTINGS!
The Marriage Tree in the Forbidden City in Beijing in China, The Trees of the Sun & Moon, The Tree Of Life, Cosmic Tree, The Tree Of Knowledge (of Good & Evil), The Garden of Eden, Serpent, Sacrament, The Fall From Paradise, The Age of Innocence, Death Entering The World, Adam & Eve, Tree Spirits: Dryads, Water Nymphs (Naiads), Ocean Spirits (Oceanids), Hill Spirits (Oreads), Yggdrasil, Norse Mythology, Jotunheim, Mimir's Well, Niflheim, The Spring of Hvergelmir, Asgard, The Norns, The Three Fates, Ratatosk, Vidofnir The Tree Snake, The Kingdom of Manannan, The Apples of Idun, Ask & Embla, Baltic Mythology, The Sacred Oak Tree, West African Spirit Tree, Chinese Earth Altars Under Tree, Twins Utu & Inanna, Uhulla Tree or Huluppu Tree, Lilith, Gilgamesh, Peredexion Tree, Divine Plan, The Trees Of The Sun & Moon, Sanctuary Of The Sun & Moon, Two Talking Trees, The Guloi Tree: The Australian Aboriginal Tree Of Life, Ngarinyin People, Christmas Tree, Sacrificial Trees, St Boniface, Tacutisi Goddess of Life, Huichol Yarn Paintings, Mirror Images of God
SACRED TREES SERIES
ELDERLY COUPLE BY THE MARRIAGE TREE IN THE FORBIDDEN CITY IN BEIJING!(China 2007)
The 'Marriage Tree' in the Forbidden City consists of two seperate trees that became entwined and grew together into one tree over the years. It is THE place for married couples to go and have their photograph taken. There was quite a queue the day were there (in November 2007). This was the oldest couple that posed by the tree and they touched the hearts of everyone who was there that day!
PLEASE NOTE!
The paintings of this series were featured in the TREE OF LIFE exhibition at the Carre D'Or Gallery in Monaco in 2009. A small book was printed featuring these paintings, gallery copy only for now, but there is an intention to do a proper art book about sacred trees in the future.
'The true artist helps the world by revealing its mystic truths'Bruce Nauman
'The imagination is a tree. It has the integrative virtues of a tree. It is root and boughs. It lives between earth and sky. It lives in the earth and in the wind. The imagined tree imperceptibly becomes the cosmological tree, the tree which epitomizes a universe, which makes a universe'.
French Philosopher Gaston Bachelard
In the year 2000 I painted The Tree of Life. This was a common theme in the Medieval paintings I had been reading about and I had little idea that eventually this concept would lead to a whole series of paintings. By 2005 I had done a lot more reading about Medieval Art and manuscripts. I decided to give The Tree of Life a companion painting: The Tree of Knowledge (of Good and Evil).
THE TREE OF LIFE (Not for sale)
Adam and Eve started off living in paradise: The Garden of Eden. They could eat freely from all trees, except two planted right in the middle of Eden. Those were the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It seems that God wished to test the human race. The Serpent tempted Eve who tempted Adam in turn. They ate of the forbidden fruit and were cast out of paradise. The Tree of life was essentially a sacrament. Eating from that tree would have given Adam and Eve the gift of everlasting life. If they would have managed not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, their reward would have been to eat from the Tree of Life.
In the fall of 2010 The 'Tree Of Life' painting from the Sacred Trees Series will appear on the cover of a book titled Garden of Beasts! It is a book by Anita Sullivan, a poet in Eugene, Oregon. This is her first full-length book of poems. Her website address is www.seventhdragon.com. The publisher is Airlie Press, www.airliepress.org , They publish books written by poets from the Willamette Valley region of the Pacific Northwest.
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE (of Good and Evil)
(80 x 100 cm) £450
At this point the concept Death enters the world. The Age of Innocence is over. From now on Eve and Adam live in the world as we know it, a world where Death and Evil exist. To read more about this please click on Biblical.
THE LABOURS OF EVE (80 x 100 cm) £525
So much for Adam and Eve.
Here is another Sacred Tree mentioned in the Bible:
THE TREE OF JESSE (80 x 100 cm) £595
The Tree of Jesse appears in the Bible (Isaiah 11) : 1 - 3 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of Wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.// 6 - 9 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
A 'World Tree' or 'Cosmic Tree' holding up the world appears in myths from all over Northern Europe and Asia. (Just today I came across a picture of a Mesoamerican world tree!)
PAZYRYK MAIDENS (Not For Sale)
The Pazyryk were nomadic people who lived in the Altai mountains in what nowadays is Siberia just south of the modern city of Novosibirsk. This area is near borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. It forms part of the Urok plateau. Here barrow-like tomb mounts were found. In Russian these are called kurgan. This word travelled the world with the news of the Pazyryk discoveries and is now universally used. In 1993 the totally frozen body of a girl was found during excavations. Now world famous, she is known as the Ice Princess. Two years later the body of a man was found. He is known as the Ice Warrior or The Horseman.
Even today nomads still inhabit the region. These people enjoy the freedom to roam at will. Unfettered by ties to land, buildings or material possessions. The only things a Pazyryk nomad will defend and preserve at all cost are the tombs of his ancestors. (Please visit the SIBERIAN page to read more about Pazyryk)
There is a very famous Tree of Life in the Kabbalah: the Otz Chiim. What is the Kabbalah? It is the ancient mystic wisdom of the Jewish faith: it is a model of the psyche, the heart of the Western mystery tradition, it is often seen as God's blueprint to creation...
OTZ CHIIM (80 x 100 cm) £595
The word 'Kabbalah' is derived from a Hebraic root word that means 'to receive', 'to accept' and by common usage: tradition. It is a large body of teachings about the nature of God, the birth of the soul, the process of Creation, the purpose of life on earth. Many different groups have adopted and worked with the Kabbalah over the centuries.
The doctrine of the 'Sundering' expresses all of reality as an aspect of God's divided self, seeking reunification with divinity, connecting to itself at all levels. This theory shows remarkably similarity to recent theories about nquantum physics, where every subatomic particle is connected to every other one. Each part contains the whole, the so called 'Holographic Universe'.
'As above, so below': Fractal Mathematics shows us that the shape of a leaf's pores echoes the shape of the leaf. The infrastructure of a leaf resembles the branches ad shape of the tree. Now this is a Tree of Life concept to be explored further in future paintings! (See also the MATHEMATICS PAGE on this website to read more about Fractals, quantum physics and other concepts from modern science).
The easiest way to understand the Otz Chiim is to think of it as a map: it describes the route that the divine energy of God's sundered self uses to find expression in the physical world. The Tree of Life consists of 10 Sephiroth (or spheres of influence), linked by 22 paths or Nativoth. The Sephiroth and Nativoth together are the '32 wondrous paths of wisdom'.
There isn't the space on this webpage to discuss all sephiroth and nativoth seperately. For more information see the bibliography at the bottom of this page. The names of the Sephiroth are: Kether (The Crown), Chokmah (Wisdom), Binah (Understanding, the womb of God), Chesed (Mercy) , Geburah (Severity), Tiphareth (Beauty), Netzach (Victory), Hod (Glory), Yesod (Foundation), Malkuth (the Kingdom).
Personally I felt moved reading about Binah: the womb of God, the dark place where things come into being and gestate. In centuries of thinking of God quite literally as a man, we lost touch with the concept 'God's womb'. I felt it deserved a mention here, even if further discussion falls outside the scope of this particular webpage.
INUIT TREE OF LIFE (80 x 100 cm) £695
This painting was inspired by seeing prints made by contemporary Inuit women artists who incorporate images from christianity and the bible in their artwork. I was very much struck by the fact that they were willing to take on Christian concepts, while Christianity has not returned the favour and always rejected shamanism downright. Not only that, great efforts have been made by missionaries to wipe out indigenous teachings and pathways of thinking all over the planet. I rather like the notion of 'Eve and the Serpent and the Animal Spirits'.
I was also struck by the fact that the concept of a 'Tree of Life' seems to exist even in places on earth (such as the arctic) where no trees are found... This particular 'tree' consists of polar animals.
(Please visit the INUIT page to read more about Inuit Concepts and see paintings inspired by the Inuit).
Almost universally trees were believed to be the dwelling of tree spirits (Dryads). These were sweet benign, nurturing spirits. Their cousins were the Naiads or water nymphs, Nereids and Oceanids (or nymphs of the ocean) and the Oreads of the hills.
In our part of the world, trees that are supposed to be sacred are Oak, Elder, Rowan, Ash and Hawthorn.
The Roman writer Pliny said that the shadow cast by an ash was avoided by snakes and therefore provided shelter, a safe space. Yggdrasil, the World Tree in Norse mythology, was an ash.
YGGDRASIL (At Carredor Gallery in Monaco)
(The World Tree in Norse Mythology)
In a dark foreboding poem, the Voluspa, a seeress tells of the fate of the Gods and of the end of the world: the Ragnarok
I remember the giants born at the dawn of time// And those who first gave birth to me// I know of nine worlds, nine spheres covered by the tree of the world// That tree set up in wisdom which grows down to the bosom of the earth.
An Ash I know, Yggdrasil its name// With water white is the great tree wet// Thence come its dews that fall in the dales// Green by Urd's well does it ever grow.
Yggdrasil was described as the largest and most stately tree to ever have grown. Its branches overhung the nine worlds and spread out above the heavens. It was supported by three great roots: one descended to Jotunheim, the land of the giants, where Mimir's Well stood, the second ended in foggy Niflheim, close to the spring of Hvergelmir, where the dragon Nighogg gnawed the root from below, when it tired of chewing corpses. The last root was embedded near Asgard, the stronghold of the gods, beneath Urd's Well, where the gods held their daily assembly. Water was taken from the well each day by the Norns: the three Fates Urd, Skuld and Verdandi. It was mixed with earth as a means of preventing Yggdrasil's bark from rotting. And eagle perched on the very top of the cosmic tree and was harassed on a daily basis by a squirrel named Ratatosk. Another bird in its branches was a cock, sometimes referred to as 'Vidofnir The Tree Snake'.
The Norse God Odin is said to have hanged himself on Yggdrasil and suffered for nine days and nights as described in the Eddic poem known as the Havamal (i.e. The Utterance of the High One). His sacrifice gained him the wisdom of the magic runes, which represented the knowledge of the other or sacred world.
'FUTHARK' or Runic Alphabet (size?) £125
(For more information about Runes please visit theLANGUAGE page)
The Cosmic Tree was thought of as the backbone of the universe, the structural support of the nine worlds. In Ireland however, the sacred tree acquired another role. Although always associated with Otherworld Splendour, its magic branches acted as cures for sickness and despair. In a number of tales these magic branches of silver or gold were brought by messengers of Otherworld lands. Thus the fabulous voyage of Bran began with the sound of music that caused him to fall asleep. It came from a silver branch with white blossoms, which a beautiful lady took away after telling of the delights of her world beyond the sea, The Kingdom of Manannan. (Use this link to visit the CELTIC SERIES , to read more about Celtic myths and see painting inspired by Celtic myths).
INUIT SEAL TREE OF LIFE (80 x 100 cm) £650
Hints of such magic are also present in Germanic mythology. An obvious example are the apples belonging to the goddess Idun. Eating this magic fruit every day prevents the gods from growing old. (They were stolen once and the gods began to be plagued by the aches and ills of aging until the apples were safely retrieved!) These apples must have grown on another magic tree!
THE CREATION OF ASK AND EMBLA
(50 x 65 cm, mixed media on paper, £195)
In Norse mythology humans were created by three gods: they created a man from a fallen ash tree and a woman from a fallen elm. Odin gave them life, Vili gave them intelligence and emotions and Ve gave them senses. Ask was the man and Embla was the woman. They were the parents of the human race.
In Baltic mythology there existed a triad of gods (Patollo, Perkuno and Potrimpo). All were associated with the sacred oak tree. Patollo is an old man with a green beard. He is the God of the Dead (in Christian times he became the Devil). Perkuno has black beard and eyes of fire. His name means thunder. He was the God of Rain and Fertility and also the God of Justice and Moral Order. Potrimpo is a young and happy God, a Peter Pan figure (or Balder figure in terms of Norse mythology).
In ancient Crete there was a pantheon that consisted of a Snake Goddess, a Sea Goddess, a Mountain Goddess, a Hunting Goddess and a Tree Goddess.
There is an ancient Egyptian symbol called the Djed Pillar, which is associated with the immortal Osiris. The Djed Pillar became the hieroglyph for 'duration and stability'. Originally it derived from the image of a tree with lopped-off branches. What is especially interesting is that this original tree image was fused with an image of Osiris's sacrum: the lowest joint of the backbone. This part of the dismembered Osiris was believed to be the immortal seat of the god's virility. It is interesting to note that its position at the root of the spine corresponds with the so called 'root chakra' of an Indian form of yoga called Kundalini yoga.
THE FAMILY TREE (80 x 100 cm) £485
This painting is about the fact that all human beings are part of one large Family Tree called The Human Race
My nine year old son Quinn said just today (10th February 2009): 'You know Adam and Eve Mum? They had all these children who spread out all over the world. And even today all these people are like Other Selves... They are so much like us that they are part of us, we are all one family... but modern people are so busy, we forget that sometimes'. Wise words, we need to listen very carefully to our children!!
In West Africa there exists a tree that tribes-men call a 'ju-ju' or Spirit Tree, to which they ascribe magical powers.
HERERO CREATION MYTH
The Herero people of southwest Africa say that the first people climbed up from a 'Tree of Life' in the underworld
(At Carredor Gallery in Monaco)
In China people would build an earth-altar under a tree. This was a crude stone upon which people made sacrifices to the local god who 'owned' a particular piece of land.
INANNA'S UHULLU TREE (SOLD)
In early Sumerian mythology there were the twins Utu (god of The Sun and Justice) and Inanna (Goddess of Love and War). A woman planted a Uhullu (or sometimes called Huluppu) tree in Inanna's garden. A bird called Imdagud built a nest in its branches. Lilith made a house in its trunk. A serpent made a home in its roots. These unwelcome guests and the fact that they won't leave drove Inanna to despair. In the end she asks her brother Gilgamesh (for more see APOGRYPHA section of Shamanism page) for help. He cuts down the tree and makes it into a throne and bed for Inanna!
ISHTAR SUCKLING TWINS (80 x 100cm) £545
The Akkadian goddess Ishtar (also known as Astarte or as Inanna to Sumerians) is shown here suckling twins. This painting was inspired by a bronze portal from the San Zeno Cathedral in Verona, showing both Ishtar and the Greek Gaia (Earth Goddess) nursing their children. In Hebrew Ishtar or Astarte's name translates as 'grove' and she is often shown as the Tree of Life. Ishtar's lover was the god Dumuzi. Ishtar and her brother Utu were twins.
And here is a story from India:
THE PEREDEXION TREE (80 x 100 cm) £525
The Peredexion Tree is a magic tree in India whose fruit is deliciously sweet. Doves live in the tree, build their nests in it and eat its fruit. A dragon lies in wait beneath the tree but is unable to rest in its shadow. If a dove leaves the protection of the tree's shadow, it is killed by the dragon. The dragon flees the shadow, moving from one side of the tree to the other as the shadow crosses the ground.
In the Middle Ages this tree was seen as a symbol for God the Father and the shadow of the tree as his son. The tree's heavenly fruit was interpreted as the wisdom of the Holy Ghost that man has received in sacraments. This way of looking at the world was typical of the Medieval period: everything has it allocated place in the Divine Plan. (To read in more detail about this, please click on Medieval Series). I.e. the lesson to be learnt here is: never remove yourself from the safety of the Tree of Life! (Though that is exactly what Adam and Eve did...)
PAZYRYK TREE OF LIFE (SOLD)
A woman's headdress intertwined with branches of the Tree of Life was found in a kurgan (funeral mound) in Pazyryk, Siberia. That concept formed the inspiration for this painting. (Please visit the SIBERIAN page to read more about Pazyryk)
TREES OF THE SUN AND MOON (80 x 100 cm) £550
Alexander the Great lived in the fourth century before Christ. He became a legendary figure already in his lifetime. Over the centuries he has been credited with many curious adventures and far ranging conquests. Alexander's last victory in battle was followed by a period of wandering through unknown lands. In India he met Brahmans, naked philosophers who shared his thirst for wisdom. He then visited the fabled Sanctuary of the Sun and Moon. Here he consulted an oracle in the form of two talking trees. They predicted that his death was imminent.
Buddhist legend tells how the Buddha, having finally arrived at at thorough understanding of finite limitations and conditions of existence, resolved to transcend them through renunciation. He resolved that, though his bones would waste away and his blood dry up, he would not leave his seat beneath the sacred banyan tree until he had successfully transcended the conditions of existence and broken through to an immediate realization of the Ultimate and Unconditioned Truth (Bodhi). The Buddha's struggle for Enlightenment is said to have taken 49 days. The tree is often referred to as the Boddhi Tree.
BUDDHA IN BANGKOK, February 2009
SACRED TREE & ALTARS BY THE SEA
KO PHI PHI ISLANDS, THAILAND
TOPIARY DEPICTING THE MONKEY GOD,
AT THE GRAND PALACE IN BANGKOK (February 2009)
The ancient Babylonians had two trees: the Tree of Truth and the Tree of Life, at the Eastern engry to Heaven.
In the Hawaiian Islands two trees: the Tree of Eternal Life and the Tree which brings Knowledge of Death are pictured as one. For the natives of these islands, the entrances to the Land of the Dead were clefts in the earth. These were called 'casting off places'. In one of their myths the soul arriving at such a place finds a tree with a group of little children gathered around it. One side of this tree is life and green, the other side is dead, dry and brittle.
The children surrounding the Hawaiian tree are the souls of the unborn. When Eve tempts Adam to eat an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, she is responsible for his 'second birth', into the world as we know it today. (To read more please visit the Apogrypha Section of the SHAMANISM page).
The modern theologian Paul Tillich has pointed out that man 'stands between two anxieties, as it were, the anxiety of losing himself by not actualizing himself... and the anxiety of losing himself by actualizing himself and his potentialities'. (Because these will take him further away from his divine origins. There is a loss of innocense in acquiring knowledge, power - and guilt).
The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
Oh, I who long to grow// I look outside myself, and the tree//inside me grows
In his Alchemical Studies Jung published paintings and drawings clients made of trees. He was struck by the fact that the Unconscious so often produces this particular image. He then realised because the all-embracing Cosmic Tree is the most fitting image for describing life's transformative processes and regenerative powers.
Clara Luces: Ascencion £595
I worked on this painting while listening to litte known Christmas Carols of Latin American Baroque origin. This image was inspired by 'The Tree of the Soul', a diagram created by William Law, an 18th century English mystic.
'A beam of light from the world of consciousness pierces the "dark world" of the unconscious in which the tree of man's spiritual and psychological development is rooted. Passing through the firre world of suffering and experience it opens out in the light of greater consciousness towards the light of God'
This is the process Carl Gustav Jung refers to as Individuation.
THE GULOI TREE (80 x 100 cm) £525
AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL TREE OF LIFE
The so called 'Guloi' tree is a plum tree native to Australia. This painting was inspired by rock art made by the Ngarinyin People. The single footprint at the very bottom has ten toes. It symbolises the track of an individual ready to journey along the pathway of knowledge. The foot is attached to the tree by several roots that symbolise family blood and family connections. Education comes from 'climbing the tree' and is represented by rings on the trunk. Rain descends from the sky onto the tree. This symbolises the arrival of monsoon rains, when lightning triggers the ripe fruit to swell and burst, then crack open and release new seed.
For the Ngarinyin people this is the Tree of Life that feeds everyone. It symbolises the responsibility they have to new life, their duty to set young people on the right pathway to tradition and wisdom.
Our sons Quinn & Elliott in hollow tree in British Columbia, Canada, June 2008
TACUTSI (80 x 100 cm) £750
Goddess of Life (inspired by Huichol paintings)
Colourful yarn paintings by the Huichol Indians in Mexico sometimes show fertility symbolism akin to rock art. (Visit ROCK ART SERIES).
This is Tacutsi, Goddess of Life, who gives birth to every living thing and is an example of the 'Great Mother Archetype'.
The Huichol Indians, whose pre-Hispanic culture still survives in the remote Sierria Madres ranges, live a life woven of magic and sacred mythology.
Here men and women keep alive the ancient traditions, relatively unaffected by Western civilisation.
These yarn paintings are shamanic art. They originated with prayer bowls placed in caves as offerings. They are personal interpretations of the Huichol relationship to the Gods. They are called 'nierikas' or Mirror Images of God. They are creative manifestations embodying the Huichol belief that we all make our own realities.
These yarn paintings connect the Huichol people to the forces of nature and the Life Force. (See also the SHAMANISM PAGE for more about this worldview)
Just this week I came across a myth from a very different part of the world, that also links Woman (or Earth Mother) and tree. The Yakut are a people indigenous to Siberia:
'Above the wide and motionless deep, under the nine spheres and seven storeys of heaven, at the most central place, the navel of the earth, earth's stillest place, where the moon does not wane and the sun does not set, where eternal summer reigns and the cuckoo calls unceasingly, there the White Youth found himself... And White Youth discovers in the vicinity of a great tree, perhaps surrounding the hill on which it stood, a lake of milk, with curdled swamps at its shores'.
Now that is a pretty powerful image of the maternal waters from which all things arise. This is the milk of the Great Goddess, the essential life-giving fluid that swells the breasts of women and flows as sap through every tree. In India (yet another part of the world) this life-sap is called Soma or Amrita and it is the heavenly elixir or 'water of life' from which the gods obtain immortality. (To find out more, see the Tree of Life book in the bibliography).
In shamanic rituals all over the world we see a transformation from the tree into a pillar or pole and that transformation brings with it a shift in symbolic meaning. The foliage is the part of the tree that undergoes change, responds to the seasons. A tree stripped of foliage reveals its changeless centre: the vertical axis. The Cosmic Tree does not only reflect the endless regeneration of the cosmos, but also it's undying unchanging centre.
In Sweden people celebrate Midsummer by dancing around a maypole. The maypole is the cosmic pole, the Axis Mundi, which centres on the pole star on which the heavens revolve. From here it descends and becomes the axis of our world.
Native American people of North America performed a Sun Dance around a sacred tree reduced to a pole or world axis (axis mundi).
As we have seen, trees have been invested with special meaning by cultures from all over the world!
Last but not least there is of course the Christmas Tree! We decorate a tree (in the past we would have used real burning candles as a symbol of the light returning) to celebrate the birth of Christ.
How much trees were once revered can be seen from the reactions of early missionaries like St Boniface. In the eighth century he cut down sacrificial trees - to the horror of the Frisians (in what is now northern Holland). He himself was felled in Dockum by an outraged pagan!
KING OF THE WOODS (80 x 100 cm) £495
In the first age of the world, Hare had stubby little ears. One day he found himself eavesdropping on a conversation between a Great Elk and his wife. The time had come for Great Elk to cast off his antlers. Hare begged to be given them and strutted around with his new antlers, several times bigger than he was himself! He thought himself King of the Woods! However, his antlers soon got entangled with bushes and brambles in the thicket and Hare was well and truly stuck. Great Elk said Hare was too scared to ever lock antlers with anyone and replaced them with great long ears - much better suited to an inquisitive an animal so keen on eavesdropping...
And here are a few more paintings featuring Sacred Trees:
"SUPPOSE" (size?) £395
From the tangle of the two// an exchange surprises// the bear and the deer// become a tree
We might see// whole jungles// emerge// from an embrace
A poem by Elizabeth Carothers Herron that really spoke to me, I had to paint the images it evoked
To see more work by Elizabeth, please follow this link:
This painting was inspired by a 15th century illustration from Dante, The Divine Comedy, titled 'Souls Transformed Into Birds'.
MANDRAKE (80 x 100 cm) £495
Mandrake is the common name for members of the plant Mandragora, belonging to the nightshades family. The roots sometimes contain bifurcations (forked bits, in plain English) that make them resemble human beings.
According to the legend, when the root is dug up is screams and kill all who hear this. Ancient literature offers elaborate instructions for pulling it up. This involves tying a dog to the root to pull it up so the dog dies instead of its master...
All parts of the mandragora plant are poisenous.
This painting was inspired by a medieval illustration in a book on the medicinal use of herbs and plants.
FAMILY TREE OF MADONNA & DAUGHTERS (Not For Sale)
The image of the Madonna and Child is a great icon in our culture. However, it always portrays mother and son: the Holy Mother Mary and her son Jesus. At times I have felt the lack of pictures celebrating the mother-daughter relationship in the same way.
Here I must admit that I have three sons and no daughter. Long before we had children I once 'saw' a little girl that asked to be our daughter. For a few days she followed me around. The time wasn't right, we didn't have children for another five years or so. That litle girl stayed on my mind. I suppose I expected her to wait and arrive later.
Three sons later I realised that my longing for a daughter dates back to that little spirit girl. I did a meditation and asked her to visit me one more time. She came and showed me a vision that I have captured in the painting above. She showed me that there have been many lives in the past where we were mother and daughter and that a soul connection remains. That she is my daughter in the spirit world. This image helped me let go of a dream and made me aware of soul connections that exist beyond our time and space dimension.
And last but not least:
STORYTELLER'S TREE (UNDER OFFER)
This painting belongs in theLanguage Series. Long before writing was invented, origin stories and myths were transmitted orally from generation to generation. This gave me the the vision of a 'Storyteller's Tree': a tree that shows how stories grow, develop and give birth to new stories as generations of storytellers breathe life into the oral heritage of the Ancient Ones, the Ancestors. This tree can also be thought of as a family tree of storytellers, as there have always been and will always be storytellers all over the world, keeping these traditions and the stories alive.
SOMALI (size?) £199
The branches of this tree form the lines of a Somali poem:
Birds perched together on the same tree// Call each their own cries// Every country has its own ways//Indeed people do not understand each other's talk
Postscript
Ever since starting this webpage, I have been looking at trees wherever I find myself. I have seen some real 'characters', trees with personality and trees in amazing locations!
TREE WE SAW IN A PARK IN MEXICO, January 2007
THE APTLY NAMED SYLVIA HOTEL IN VANCOUVER: A GREEN ZONE! May 2008
TREE OUTSIDE EMILY CARR'S HOUSE IN VICTORIA ON VANCOUVER ISLAND
TREE ON TOP OF SKYSCRAPER IN VANCOUVER, June 2008
WICKENBURGH, 'Evelien's Forest'
The Netherlands
Imelda Almqvist, April 2006
(Last updated June 2009)
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The 'Tree of Carnal Knowledge' doesn't exist in either real life or mythology! It is a tree of my own invention inspired by the so called grotesques in Medieval manuscripts. This painting is about how much some people will risk by 'chasing their own bottoms' (a pastime politician seem particularly fond ot). And yet, all human beings carry the ability to reproduce themselves and 'add a branch to their own family tree'.
An awesome thought really!
Imelda Almqvist, (Last updated: August 2010)
Bibliography
THE TREE OF LIFE, Symbol of the Centre, Roger Cook, Thames And Hudson, London, 1974 ISBN 0 500 81007 9
The Sacred Tree in Religion and Myth, Mrs J. H. Philpot, Dover Publications NY 2004, originally published in 1897, ISBN 0-486-43612-8
The Marriage Tree in the Forbidden City in Beijing in China, The Trees of the Sun & Moon, The Tree Of Life, Cosmic Tree, The Tree Of Knowledge (of Good & Evil), The Garden of Eden, Serpent, Sacrament, The Fall From Paradise, The Age of Innocence, Death Entering The World, Adam & Eve, Tree Spirits: Dryads, Water Nymphs (Naiads), Ocean Spirits (Oceanids), Hill Spirits (Oreads), Yggdrasil, Norse Mythology, Jotunheim, Mimir's Well, Niflheim, The Spring of Hvergelmir, Asgard, The Norns, The Three Fates, Ratatosk, Vidofnir The Tree Snake, The Kingdom of Manannan, The Apples of Idun, Ask & Embla, Baltic Mythology, The Sacred Oak Tree, West African Spirit Tree, Chinese Earth Altars Under Tree, Twins Utu & Inanna, Uhulla Tree or Huluppu Tree, Lilith, Gilgamesh, Peredexion Tree, Divine Plan, The Trees Of The Sun & Moon, Sanctuary Of The Sun & Moon, Two Talking Trees, The Guloi Tree: The Australian Aboriginal Tree Of Life, Ngarinyin People, Christmas Tree, Sacrificial Trees, St Boniface, Tacutisi Goddess of Life, Huichol Yarn Paintings, Mirror Images of God
IMELDA ALMQVIST ART: JOURNEYS TO OTHER WORLDS, INNER WORLDS AND AROUND THE WORLD IN PAINTINGS!
