A Fire in the Head

“Her bloodred halo is like the ancient Roman flammeum, the bridal veil flame-colored to induce love in the soul. This flammeum also points to the belief in the genius residing in the head, the belief in the life-soul or divinity, often referred to as “a fire in the head.” Alchemically, this reddening is also an epiphany of the rubedo, the crimson flush of Aphrodite in the bleached and whitened body of the work – blood returning to the head as after a faint, thoughts reddened into life, the rich blood of love coloring the pale face of austerity: Aurora.”

Noel Cobb, ‘The Morbid and the Beautiful’ in Archetypal Imagination: Glimpses of the Gods in Life and Art (1992).

I’ve had a difficult year, and it’s not over yet. I’ve struggled to keep it together, to be authentic, to respect my melancholy and dwell in it, but also to realise that there is more to life. I have lost love, and I have placed my faith in love again – I have chosen love. I have also chosen difficulty, being in the world, engagement.

I was born under the rulership of Venus and I cannot avoid her, cannot escape her, can never leave her service. I have shivered this year, I have reduced, my body has made stones within itself, I have bleached and whitened. It is all process, all passing –passing strange, and passing. I have tried to hold the Tao, I have tried to live in uncertainty, I have sometime succeeded.

A cruel anniversary awaits me only days away, I feel its gravity drawing me into its singularity, feel the blood draining from me in its presence. It is hard to see beyond it, it draws in all light, all life – but I will pass through it. I will work with this, as I’ve worked with pain before. I will work with it in ways I’ve never worked with pain before, and so I will add new ways of working with pain to my repertoire. Some of this is wisdom. Wisdom is some of this. It is all the work, the alchemy of the soul.

I will do my best to be true to the fire in my head, I ask you to find your mind fire.

James Piers Taylor, London 12/12/2006

IMAGE: Madonna (1894-95) by Edvard Munch.