root-and-branch - Tumblr blog

[root-and-branch]

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath // art by @/kosmiklia on ig // William Chapman // Virginia Woolf // Brian Andreas // artwork - flowers by Hanna Ilczyszyn // Elizabeth Kinkaid-Ehlers, Still Searching

[root-and-branch]

Aries Sun - Aries Moon - Libra Rising 

The combination of your sun and moon sign produces a truly explosive personality. You are dynamic and hard hitting, as well as powerful and magnetic. People may view you as hard boiled because of a tendency for you to be too matter-of-fact. You do express yourself readily and forcefully, with considerable dramatic effect. Moreover you are not impressed with abstract thoughts and ideas, only actions and accomplishment. This is not to say you don’t use your mind. Your mind is always active: reading, talking, discussing. A full life of experience is what you strive for, and you hold that there is nothing that can replace this. You need to work on being more sensitive in your relationships with others, particularly your romantic partner. This is one of the best combinations of sun and moon and leads far upward, once you have mastered the more self-centered leanings of your nature and learned to objectify. Libra Rising, the sister sign of Aries, balance this combination out. You are pleasant, nice and most notably charming! You attract others with your good look, romantic view and fair decisions. On the other side you are attracted to those who are competent and active.

@ dusty-forest

[root-and-branch]

Happy 牛 Year ✨

[root-and-branch]

CHINESE NEW YEAR 2021

Chinese New Year is also the Spring Festival and it falls on the Lunar New Year. This year it is on February 12th and we will being moving from the Year of the Rat to the Year of the Ox! Traditionally it is celebrated with family and food, but also the gifting of lucky money to unmarried relatives, mostly children.

For the Chinese New Year we are celebrating with a Tang Poetry collection done in calligraphy and woodcut, because they are about the changing of seasons. The book is titled The Boat Untied and Other Poems: A Translation of T’ang Poems in Wood with original poems in Chinese calligraphy created by artist Hui-Ming Wang and published in 1971 by Barre Publishers in Barre Massachusetts. 

Keep reading

[root-and-branch]

Veils of Negative Existence. Within the Mystical system of the Qabalah, there are three Veils of Negative Existence: Ain (“Light”) Ain Soph (“Without Limit”) Ain Soph Aur (“Limitless Light”) Within, or beyond, these Veils are everything that is not. In a sense, they represent Pre-Existence, the state of all things before they make their initial Manifestation in Kether, the first Sephira, or Sphere of Existence. There are three Qabalistic Veils of the Negative Existence, and in themselves they formulate the Hidden Ideas of the Sephiroth not yet called into being, and they are concentrated in Kether, which in this sense is the Malkuth of the hidden ideas of the Sephiroth. The Limitless Ocean of Negative Light does not proceed from a Centre, for it is Centreless, but it concentrates a Centre, which is the number one of the Sephiroth, Kether, the Crown, the First Sephira; which therefore may be said to be the Malkuth or the number ten of the hidden Sephiroth. Thus, Kether is in Malkuth and Malkuth is in Kether. First is Nothing, or the Absence of Things, אין [Ain], which does not and cannot mean Negatively Existing. Second is Without Limit אין סוף [Ain Soph] “i.e.”, Infinite Space. This is the primal Dualism of Infinity; the infinitely small and the infinitely great. The Clash of these produces a finite positive Idea which happens to be Light, אור [Aur]. This word [Aur] is most important. It symbolises the Universe immediately after Chaos, the confusion or Clash of the Infinite Opposites. א [Aleph] is the Egg of Matter; ו [Yod] is Taurus, the Bull, or Energy-Motion; and ר [Resh] is the Sun, or organised and moving System of Orbs. The three Letters of [Ain] thus repeat the three Ideas. It is very difficult to explain the Negative Veils, because they represent a Reality (or lack thereof) that is, by definition, beyond human comprehension. Since it does surpass all finite understanding, immutable and boundless as its expanses are to the human Mind whose most profound speculation could not approach to the faintest adumbration of what It is in Itself, it must ever remain a mysterious Emptiness - Nothing. Ain Soph is neither Spirit nor Will, but rather the underlying condition or material for both, as well as being the ultimate cause of Matter and Force. Such things come into spontaneous Existence from the Negative Veils because of Cyclic Law, which can be identified with the “Will to Manifest.” This law states that the Light [Ain] is normally in a state of Quiescence, moving in constant motion in a perfect Circle, as an Ouroboros. However, from time to time, the Light concentrates on itself and becomes polarized into Spirit and Matter. The mechanism for this process is unclear, so it cannot be understood in any reasonable sense. But whatever the method, the result of the process is the concentration of Infinite Light in Kether.

[root-and-branch]

Adam Burke

[root-and-branch]

Fernando Pessoa’s notebook, written from 1904-1907.

[root-and-branch]

Talisman of the Moon, from Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.b.26 (The Book of Oberon), c. 1577-1573.

[root-and-branch]

Hellmouth by Luciana Nedelea

[root-and-branch]

Is this Christina Ricci

[root-and-branch]

Pizza Inn - December 1979 - Tuscaloosa, AL

[root-and-branch]

16th century ring that unfolds into an astronomical sphere

[root-and-branch]

Victorian Kink ™.

[root-and-branch]

Christmas card photo, 1934

[root-and-branch]

vancouver, wa

[root-and-branch]

Norman F*****g Rockwell Tour