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So 860 years after the Rose of Saint-Denis, Kenny La Roche - in the Autumn of 2003 - offers to our community, in the spirit of Suger, our own Rose Window in our own visual tongue: The Athanorian Rose is a 13 foot steel circle composed of 12 petals which surround a 4 foot circle within which a wooden circular Alembic encloses a small steel circular Athanor which is itself divided into 4 and within which hangs a pregnant Seedstone. Within the 12 petals of the Rose are 12 other stones wrapped in steel tracery and rotating clockwise like the hours. There is a 4 pointed Rosy Cross marking the Cardinal points within the golden circle. All of which is very Jungian and redolent of Mandalas, Oculi, Wheels of Fortuna & Fata, Monstrance & Wind-Eye, Swastika & Geometry run babbling to the well. Then there's the Monkey . . .
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Most Rose Windows have a theme, like the Last Judgment or the Creation; many of them are paeans to Mary the Mother of God. Our Rose illustrates the cautionary tale of Man's emergence onto the Moral Stage of Choice. If we were solely Christian the symbolism would be Edenic and there would have to be a Snake and an Apple and a dreamy virgin without a clue. But Kenny La Roche practices a pandemic spiritualism which covers the ground of god like a flood; we mix images with faiths unabashedly. Dogma, to Kenny, is a sauce whose ingredients change with the meat.
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I think the last thing I want to say about Mandalas is this definition by Longchenpa: "An integrated structure organized around a unifying center." The definition could just as easily fit the concept of "self" and "god" and "universe" as well as "consciousness" - the last being the ingredient which makes the other terms possible. I caught the reflection of Mary in this Holy Water Stoup in Lisboa. It's a vision only apprehended from a specific point of view. How many metaphors are present in this image?
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This 12 lobed Rose is also from Lisboa. It too sports a Maltese Cross in its center. The 4 in the center provide a Square within the Circle - an ancient formula for unifying opposites. Jung was right to point out that the closest things to the center of the Mandala were the most meaningful. He also pointed out that a square within a circle is not as "developed" a structure as is the circle within the square. Circles speak thru intuition; squares mumble in the dialect of the conscious.
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In the Chinese/Buddhist tradition Sun Wukung - the Monkey King - is born from a rock which has been alchemically fertilized by the warm sun itself. His meandering story is a metaphor for enlightenment - as is the Mandala, and the reflected image in the Lisboa Stoup. Like the Snake in Genesis, Monkey is the source of great wisdom and great mischief. He makes himself immortal by stealing from the gods the Peach of Immortality and then erasing his name from the Roster of Death. Monkey is a Trickster God like Hermes and Coyote, like Raven and Brer' Rabbit - he is emblematic of the raw, primal energy of the creative before the creative has found its boundaries and its forms. When the Serpent in the Garden offers Eve the Apple of Gnosis he too plays the Trickster. In the Orient this same scene is depicted by the Monkey offering a Peach to a Sage - in both traditions the respective fruits - apple or peach - are symbols of the world, of the flesh, ultimately - of the Devil. They are vessels of Matter which have swallowed Spirit and both Eve and the Sage are strongly advised to think twice before accepting them as a juicy gift.
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Slag is Kenny La Roche's Chef d"Atelier - he's the grüppenführer who gets things done. He's the master of the steel & the forge and bears the brunt of the responsibility for Design. When Kenny takes to the field for an Oh-Dark-30 Mission, Slag is the Field Marshall. He also has a Ph.D. in somekinda New Age Hermeneutics so sometimes people have to call him Doctor Doctor. His father also has a Doctorate & spent his youth with Patton chasing Panzer Divisions across Europe. Slag's old man went toe to toe with Nazi Tiger tanks and lived to tell about it. Kenny weighs us genetically before he calls us to his Cathedral.
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