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photo
- 1997 |
Guinevere's
Grail - Jennifer
Wagner
An Everybody-Is-an-Artist
technique by which to create an inward quest for surprising and
profoundly deep self-knowledge
Invitation
to a Ceremony . . .
Thank you for walking through this windy winter evening, up from
the rich meadow of your life through thickets of moss under dancing
trees in swirling, mist-laden air to reach this sacred hillock,
huddle around the circle of this ceremonial fire, and be blessed
by this sudden stillness and this star-sprinkled midnight blue sky
breaking into night. Around this fire I am honored to tell the story
of a vision quest, the journey on which the vision sent me, and
to give you the gift the journey has given me; an art technique
through which you can create a timeless bountiful cup, or grail,
which holds infinite revelations about your personal life story.
Questing for
a meaningful life in 1978, lost between the pasts and futures of
my life, I found two trails - one back to my true self and one forward
to the central question of my life: a search for God and to learn
the infinite secrets of my Soul and the Universe. Like so many people
I met in the '80s who quested for lives of meaning or personal identities
somehow lost in what I can now call a cultural trance, I avidly
searched for clues. Queen Guinevere's story beckoned - her name
the origin of mine. Here I found another Eve and searched for, and
found, here exoneration. I learned that the Holy Grail is a cup
of arguable description and origin, yet is commonly understood to
be regenerative and nurturing. Eventually, I found such a cup in
discovering the art process I call "Guinevere's Grail."
In a dream
I returned to a palace as royalty and met my brother, a Black Prince.
Touching together gemstones twined in braids on each side of my
head and touching them to the door, I opened a gigantic brass vault.
With a throng as audience I received from the Prince the gift of
a golden filigree brooch in the shape of a silhouetted woman's head
with a gemstone as the cranium. When I brought the gemstone toward
my eyes, it flooded my vision with rays of brilliant light. I was
then challenged to choose to be true to my life.
Later, the
meaning of the brooch with the woman's profile came to life when
I discovered the Guinevere's Grail art technique. I learned that
Keats' poem, "An Ode to a Grecian Urn," is about two people
eternally moving towards each other but who will never meet because
they're carved on a vase in stone - exactly how I felt about meeting
the animus described by Jung.
The basic
technique is simple, yet quite surprisingly profound! It begins
by tracing a silhouette of one's own head - one facing left and
one right. Trace hour head "ear to the ground" on a large
piece of paper at a table - looking one way, then the other. Study
these countenances, embellishing them, then put their faces "in
conversation" and see what happens. Between faces - in real
life or in these tracings - is the transformative space of possibility!
In my first
drawing two women, an ancient crone and a serene matriarch, appeared
and have continued to teach me. Studying, embellishing, and reviewing
these tracings always generates spontaneous recognition and new
depths of understanding - at perceptual, archetypal and soul-levels.
I now see the true quest to be both growing into and reclaiming
aspects of our true selves.
Jennifer Wagner teaches the Guinevere's Grail
technique and other empowering experiences in individual and workshop
sessions, offering two series in Seattle this winter. You can contact
her at (206) 440-8742 or email her at: jenniferwagner@speakeasy.net
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