Know yourself…

She who knows herself.

The Toji – gateway between two worlds – the waking world – the dream world, the spirit realm. The moon.
The waking world – Eve – an island in the eternal coiling sea of the dreamworld – Tiamat –
While Eve obeys to mans demand – the spirit of Lilith does not.
She does not fear her own desires – she knows herself.

Bound in the state between the worlds – the hypnagogic state.

Unable to move – sleepparalysis.

She enter the abbyss… for sho does not fear her own desire.

She is becoming lucid withing the waking – and the dreaming world, like the fullmoon.

Know thyself.

Explore the Oracleia – “She who knows herself”


Sigil Magic – Creating a magical Sigil, inspired by chinese Sigils

My sigil-method…

Sigil Magick is a visual form of magic.

It´s a encoding of a desire or a wish that is not readable to the intelectual mind, thus it can not be subject of the critical mind.

The idea behind sigil magick is quite simple.

Name a wish or a desire you would like to have fullfilled, and write it down.

There are a few things that should be considered here: first – remember to be responsable for your wishes. No one else is. Consider well if you would like experience desired reality.

Second: Wishes, as well as affirmations should always be written from the perspective of the wish already fulfilled – that is in a positive formulation and in the presence:

” I want to become lucid within my dreams” turns to ” I AM lucid within my dreams”

From this sentence wich could be used as a simple affirmation at this point, the sigil magick starts with encrypting the desire. The reason for this is, that whenever you see this desire written in front of you, or you speak it out loud, it can be understand by, and thus be subject of the critical mind.

If you say to yourself ” I am lucid within my dreams” you inner critic might turn on this phrase and tell you that you have not been lucid in the past, that you dont have the thing it takes to become lucid within your dreams, and that it is a futile wish to have. It might also kick in some fears, that you might experience unknown and strange things, or that you might get caught up in the dreamworld – fears that can be very far of the reality, but they fullfill their function to hinder yourself to put a step into the unknown and to experience your desires.

The way sigil magick deals with thi is the encryption of the desire that comes in multiple steps.

The first one would be to reduce the sentence to its single letters:

“I AM LUCID WITHIN MY DREAMS” turns to ” IAMLUCDWTHNYRES”

This combination of letters, now is a first encryption, but the rational mind that is also very good in finding patterns will have not a big hurdle to understand and read the meaning behind it.

So we dissolve the symbols of the letters and transform the sentence into another symbolic language:

There are different methods for this, and I will explain my own here:

In this method we will create a “Key” for the encryption. This key can be done by youself, following this instructions:

Create a matrix of dots, in a square of 4 x 4 dots, and another one of 3×3 Dots within this one – so you end with a isometric pattern like this:

This is the basic structure for the key.

To make it a useable key you will need to asign one letter of the alphabet to each dot.

It does not matter how you asign them, but make sure it is somewhat chaotic and not with a certain “rule” like the alphabet backwards or something similar…

For this pattern there is one dot missing for one letter – choose to leave out the latter that is used the most seldom in your language that you have formulated the wish in. In my example and as my mother language is german, I will leave out the “Q” wich is a very seldom letter in german and that can be represented otherwise, for example as “kw”.

The ready “key” looks something like this:

We can now use this key for the further encryption of our desire / wish, by encircle the dots that are asigned with the letters in our pre encrypted desire:

IAMLUCDWTHNYRES

Which, without the letters looks like this for the key above:

At this stage, I remove the letters, so the rational mind can not remember the exact key easily. You can do this by eighter erasing the letters, transfering the encrypted desire to another grid without letters, or if you use a digital drawing device like I am, you can easily blend out the layer of the letters. Just make sure you keep the letters in a save place where you find them when you want to decrypt the sigil in future.

The next step is to create a form that is readable for the eyes. I do this by conecting the dots.

Although this can be done freely, I personally like to stick to some rules for doing this:

Keep it as simple bot not too simple. The useage of those sigils lies within the magical work.
So the sigil should be workable with, that means:

It should encrypt the desire, and thus should not be too simple as a form.
But you also might want to do magical work with it, so it should be simple enought that you are able to visualize the sigil ( eg. with eyes closed )

So there is a golden line to walk here.

Second rule: I create ONE connected structure. ( You will see below, why this is important )

Third rule is I try to touch as little non-appering dots as possible, and only if they are on one line between two appearing dots.

Remember: This is my process – you might want to invent your own rules here…

This is the result of the rules above:

Now we could stop here and use the form as it is.
However, the magical atmosphere and thus the power we asociate with this sigil will increase if we also pour in some dedication when it comes to aesthetics.

Since I am heavily inspired by chinese sigels and signs, I try to get closer to the traditional chinese look.

I achieve this with with a typical double-border, that old carved chinese sigils tend to have.

Then I fill all the negative space from the border into the sigil-structure.

I dont touch the Sigil with this border, but I fill up all the negative space, creating a “maze-like” effect that I really love for magical work.

Filling up the sigils negative space balances it out and also ads additional information to it and increses its decoding.

In this example I came up with this – please note how the outer frame does not touch the inner frame, and the filling forms only touch the inner frame and belong to it, but not the sigil-structure or the outer frame.

This sigil is now a vesel for the desire encrypted in and is used in meditation or magical rituals to represent the desire it contains.

For a explanation on how to work with this sigils, follw me on…

How to make gelatine solution for traditional chinese and japanese Painting Styles, like Nihonga and Gong Bi

Nikawa is the japanese word for the gelatine solution that is used in certain old chinese and japanese painting styles, namely nihonga and gong bi style. The gelatine solution is used as a binder for pigments, as well as for preparation ( sizing ) of the paper, to reduce its absorbancy. In this video I used 20 g of good quality gelatine, and 200 ml of water.

You can see the process in the video below…

Continue reading “How to make gelatine solution for traditional chinese and japanese Painting Styles, like Nihonga and Gong Bi”

Mountain Water Clouds & Moon – Some work in progress pictures

Finally I did it. This picture was a lot of work, even if it may not look so. There are lots and lots of layers of soft grey washes done here. It may not reach the hundred-mark, but I am sure there are about 60-80 layers.

For those who are interested in, I managed to remind my self of taking some work in progress pictures… so here they are:

Here you can see… almost nothing. But a thing you can notice is how fine chinese rice paper is. It really is nearly about transparent, especially after it´s wet. The dark line in the upper third revers not to the painting, its a stroke on the painting board that is shining through…

First few washes, defining the mountains and the moon in negative space.

And on it goes. The difficulty here is to repaint exactly the same forms, for example of the mountains to not get them fuzzy edges…

By so far, I was quite happy with the overall composition, but realized that something was really missing. Layer-amount at this point: about 30

So I decided to paint in some clouds for getting more live into the painting. I started to softly define them through negative space, always paying attention not to get to sharp edges.

More and more clouds where rising…

And, of course, the golden moon. Hi is done in gold-leaf of fair-trade gold (23 K) from thailand. A really lovely, warm gold-tone… 

You can also see that I darkened the foreground mountains a lot more since I started…

And finally done…

I choose a passage from the Dao-Te-Jing from Lao-Tsu, that I rally like as balance text for the empty space in the right-under corner. 

It is about the water and it´s softness that is superior all hardness.

I also add my artist-name and my seal.

And so it is ready now, to be mounted onto a traditional chinese silk scroll…

Thanks for watching! 

If you liked, please leave a comment !

Working with No-Tan´s – value-scetches

I just found an old blog-entry of mine from 2013…

The words “No-Tan” come from the traditional japanese art and mean the general, and most often the tone-value structure of a picture. 

“No” has the meaning of dark, saturated ink ( traditional japanese painting is mostly done in black-white ), while “Tan” has the meaning of more diluted, and brighter ink.

Continue reading “Working with No-Tan´s – value-scetches”

My Workspace – most important things

As a turn of faith, I am currently located in Ecuador, next to the capital Quito.

I am not completely happy with it, but will return to Germany in December, so it´s what you would call an interesting experience. 

Because of the situation, my workspace is much smaller, than it used to be, but have a look on your own:

In these day´s I use only japanese Watercolors, called “Shin-Gansai”.

I prefer the one´s from the Holbein Corp. 

They have excellent shining and brightness and are really fluid. (You can see the Box in the back, the dark-brown one under the window.

I made this experience often: Whenever the question comes to quality, japanese stuff is one of the first choice. ( For example the tools, papers, clothes, etc.) 

As you can see I use Chinese Brushes, and German Paper. 

The Paper is made of Bamboo, has a nice surface and is a very good end ecological Paper.

I use japanese Sumi, what is a kind of ink for my black, because it is a lively black, with a very soft bluish tone. The sumi is solid, you have to rub it on stone, together with water to make the tone you want.

Also a very important tool are the small naps of ceramic, you can see on the picture.

They allow me to mix a special color or tone, that I use for larger areas, without great changes in the color. I came to these ones very late, but now I don`t want to miss them.

Of course I have certain other things I use, like rubbers, pencils, pens, salt and alcohol for creating texture, etc. but I think these are the most important things for my work by now.