Active flux.
Subtly moving, moving,
And so slowly, slowly,
Life's difficulties begin.
Yellow is pure;
In secret unseen, its boundaries conceal
The flourishing by the fountain.
The Lizard/Muse represents change and mystical transformation. She is the initiator. She is the demon who dismembers the initiate in order to rebuild a new body that can enter both material and spiritual worlds. She is Shiva, the destroyer, as well as Parvati, his consort. She can be divided into a multitude of other archetypes: Kali, Durga, Yama, and even Satan. She is beyond the mere dualism of traditional Christianity. She is the wildness of nature; Diana of the hunt. She is the art itself; the means for transformation as well as the evidence of transformation. She represents the greatest depths reached through sex. She is sex, but goes beyond the simple gratification of the body.
The following could be seen as an accurate outline of my aesthetic ideas, yet they are bound by a medieval style and medieval Roman catholic ideology. The piece, Novena for the Order of Euphonius Monks was written while I was immersed in the study of Western European medieval culture. It demonstrates my idea of art as a spiritual activity. I had said previously that the Dog represented Christian ethics, so one would wonder why I would start the chapter on the Muse in this Medieval Christian style. It is because the piece does not really deal with ethics at all but rather the goal of Christian mysticism which is the union with God. Again, the Muse is the art which, like Dante's Beatrice, leads the soul through love.1 The art is the means. God is the goal. In the cosmology I have outlined God would be the Birdman or the Supreme Unmanifested Brahman. He is the personality which unifies everything but in no way is to be associated with the ego. That is Bob Price.
The correspondences at the beginning and end of the piece were with my professors, Fred Turner (poet and son of Victor Turner) and Dennis Kratz (medievalist). The Tsan from the T'ai Hsuan Ching are not part of the original work but have been added later to tie it in with the larger work. The Tsans seem to call for the Novena for the Order of Euphonius Monks, but the exact correspondences are random. The name, "Euphonius Monks," was invented by a friend of mine, Larry Roark, who plays euphonium. He, other friends, and I used to improvise together and jokingly called ourselves "Euphonius Monks." The rest of the pun is related to the name of a famous jazz artist. You may notice that I had to "beautify" some of my mentors in order better make my aesthetic ideas fit into medieval monasticism.
1 Aligheri, Dante. The Divine Comedy; n.d.; rpt. 1981; Princeton University Press.