When the Pattern Instructs the Pattern-Maker

At first, I wrote them down this way:

"THREE PARTS TO OUR NEODRUIDIC SPIRITUALITY"  

Conversation with the

GODS and other SPIRITS

Celebration of

LIFE and the LIVING

Reverence for

the DEAD

--------

Recognizing them then as a set of sacred three,

I felt compelled to arrange them as a triskelion...

which immediately begged the question of 

an implied hierarchy, i.e., were I to proceed,

which of the three goes above the other two?

Now, there are the anarchists, contrarians and others who will reject anything to do with hierarchical arrangements as implicitly "wrong" and may (or may not) have a well thought out rationale behind the reflex, but when, as I have all my life, one works with creating geometric diagrams for the use of revealing or clarifying the componentry of a system, sometimes I've found what I can only describe as a "mystery-teaching" arises that operates along the lines of numerical and/or spatial principles on the page which themselves begin to first challenge and then instruct the artist, opening further levels of meaning and hidden principles as the artist progress through the piece.

The making of mandalas may be the work of a teacher, one seeking to convey complex ideas more simply, yet we see that, in-process, the teacher-as-artist resumes the role of student, if, instead of pounding square pegs through round holes, we agree to listen to the wisdom of number, sequence, form and beauty.

This is not artifice; these are the ways of Nature.

Here is what the process made me (-taught me to) choose this time:

To me, this is the business of Our Druidism.