On Icon Writing, Vessels and Sieves

Gabriel Icon, Vladislav Andrejev

Angel Gabriel by Vladislav Andrejev

During my college years, I had the great blessing of being able to study for a time at School of the Sacred Arts (SOSA) in NYC. It was an amazing place which gathered masters from many diverse spiritual traditions, teaching everything from Haiku, Tibetan butter sculpture, manuscript illumination, Russian Icon writing (painting), Tibetan Tonka painting, Indian dance, Chinese calligraphy and on and on. There were also lectures on mysticism and sacred traditions by scholars and spiritual leaders. Everything was geared to help you enter into and experience sacred mystical traditions, ground and guided by true masters. It was an amazing place which sadly closed years ago. It was here that I first met Lex Hixon, Karen Gorst (my co-author on Lapis & Gold) and studied Icon writing with Vladislav Andrejev.

Vladislav is an amazing man who radiates spirituality. I was in school at NYU and had to walk across Washington Square park to my Icon class in the old church that SOSA had taken over. I would often come upon Vladislav sitting on a bench deep in prayer in preparation for his class.Let me put it kindly, I was not a success at Icon writing. This class was probably my first conscious, overtly spiritual struggle and my first awareness of my ego's roll in defining my life.

To write an Icon, you have to set aside your ideas and submit to the form, following the master's instructions entirely. At that time, this was impossible for me. Directions and me didn't mix. I used to brag that I couldn't even follow the directions on a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese and it was true. Not because I was unable read the instructions or understand them, but because my need to control was so profound. I couldn't even follow the simplest instruction from someone, even written on a box, without arguing.

I wanted to write an Icon, but I want to "express myself" more. I was angry at being confined. I worked on an Angel Gabriel Icon and I was incensed that I could not alter the image at all to put my stamp on it. I was angry that I couldn't choose my own colors for the many layers that built Gabriel's face and clothing. It was absurd. I had big plans, but my plans interfered with my ability to write an Icon and striped me of the intimate knowledge and spiritual truths contained in that process.In Icon writing everything has form, order and meaning. Order and form are strictly prescribed. You must travel their path to get to meaning. You can intellectually understand the meaning, but it will have no impact on your spirit without surrendering completely into the process. Only in this way will mind and spirit become one in knowledge and can you grow spiritually.Vladislav's class made it very clear to me that I had a problem. Through him, for the first time, I began to be aware of how ego was dominating my life. Of course, nothing shifted then. It took me twenty years and 10 days in the cardiac ICU to learn to surrender. But the awareness first came from him, through the process of Icon writing. It is an art, like manuscript illumination, which has deep spiritual effects on the artist. It demands the artist be healed through its process because it's goals are so profound.Icons are meant to be windows to God. They seek to remove the veils between the Divine and humanity. They are filters that allow a more pure resonance of God's light to pour into the world. Theodore Roethke said:

Form is not regarded as a neat mould to be filled, but rather as a sieve to catch certain kinds of material.

This is a profound statement. We are not simply empty vessels to be filled with anything that comes along. We have a choice to filter and hold what is dear to us. Although we are vessels, we are active participants too.What I didn't understand yet in Vladislav's class is that our only work here is opening the door for Divine Light, that some more true expression of the Self can emerge from surrendering the self, and that we are filters and windows too, walking Icons. While written Icons capture a timeless moment of peace and surrender harnessed by the spiritual surrender of the artist, we move through time. Each moment becomes a choice- what will we filter, what will we surrender? What kind of window will we build, one filled with an an opaque and dirty glass or one luminous, bridging two worlds?Vladislav now teaches at Prosopon School of Iconology and has just released a set of instructional DVDs. Here is a short excerpt:To see more excerpts or order the DVD go to the Prosopon School of Iconology website and click "Process" on the left sidebar. I believe after 20 years of work I may finally be ready to be a beginning Icon writer. I am ordering this video.

Healing the Earth: The Calling of the Spiritual Artist?

Earth from Space
Jesus Icon
Dirt

Yesterday I spoke at length about the importance of a spiritual artist merging the physical and spiritual worlds in the act of creation. All art springs from the fecund stream of Divine creativity. I also spoke of the sacred principle “as above, so below.” This principle basically means that everything is an echo of the Divine.In the figure of Jesus, God as revealed many things, not the least that Divinity and physicality can be merged. Whether you believe in Jesus or not, the symbol is a potent one. I am not suggesting that an artist can bring full Divinity into their work, but I am suggesting that Jesus is the macrocosm and art is the paler, yet important, microcosm, the echo for integrating the physical & spiritual.This is why the Earth becomes so important. As long as we fool ourselves into thinking that anything we do is separate from the Earth, was cannot bring God here. If artists see the ideas in their work as more important than their physical execution, God is lost. This is why, in my opinion conceptual art fails so radically.In our society we have forgotten that everything we use is a fruit of the Earth. Perhaps it is easy to grasp that eggs come from chickens, but what of paint in tubes, plastic boots, or children’s toys? Let’s stay with the artist. How many artists know the source of their own paint? Does anyone realize that watercolor paint sticks to the page because of tree sap or that true ultramarine blue come from crushed stones? (More on this here.)

An artist must fully accept and embrace physicality. This is almost an impossibly hard task because by doing so we become confronted with the brokenness of our planet. To bring God into physicality through the act of creation is an act of healing. It is no more or less significant than any act of healing. It is only our egos which put a value judgment on it: “It’s only a painting, what can it possibly matter?” Each piece of art is but a grain of healed sand, but sand can pile up as anyone who lives near the beach can tell you. An artist must be content to labor at thier Divinely given task. To be an agent of healing requires nothing less than complete abandonment of self will and trust in the Divine steam of creativity which flows through us. As artists, we are called to heal the Earth.My next post will be about how some mystics view of the earth and healing. In the meantime checkout these amazing posts on Earth & Spirituality:

Gartenfische (of course!)

Sound and Silence(This starts out about Halloween, but keep reading, it’s worth it)

Fear

Today found about something might change quite dramatically in my life. If it comes to pass, I will share it here. But for now, I’ll just say that it brought up a lot of fear for me, fear of change. I was inspired and helped by a post written on Dec. 3rd by Jan about an experience she had with an icon. She says that:

Today I sat with the Virgin of Vladimir and found her eyes to be as piercing as they were the first time I ever sat with her. She holds the pain of the world in her eyes, which causes me to have tears. Tears are the gift of God, so I am assuming sitting with a few tears is my gift.

The ability to sit with tears without trying to stop or change them is an amazing gift. It is by sitting and accepting our pain that we can transform it. So today I took Jan’s cue and sat with my fear and it started to shift. Thanks Jan! Now that that’s processed, I’m going to draw…