The Seed of Life
With the theme of my new collection in March being Spring, I'll be looking at concepts of rebirth, growth, new life and beginnings.
There are so many ways that these concepts can manifest and so many different avenues to explore. One symbol I've been drawn to as a starting point for some of these thoughts has been the Seed of Life.
The formation of seven overlapping circles with the same diameter. six of them regularly spaced within the seventh, producing a rosette with eighteen lens shaped petals, has been present in cultures around the world for centuries and was first documented in the ancient Near East, during the second millennium BCE
However, Seed of Life and Flower of Life are modern names coined by Drunvalo Melchizedek in his workshops and books on sacred geometry since the mid 1980’s.
To see how I drew this version of the pattern, check out my youtube channel here
Whilst I don't subscribe to Melchizedek's school of thought I do enjoy drawing these symbols and I do see the patterns as representative, for myself at least, of life, of nature, of seeds and new beginnings.....
I also think that the repetative nature simply screams growth....and quite an exponential growth at that!
As you can see, I've been using this symbology across my work for quite a while, but I hope in my new collection to explore some new avenues of expressing it and to dig further into the the feelings that it evokes, as I search for new ways to express them.
One aspect of this feeling of new growth and development...on a personal level....definitely relates to my 'coming out' over the past few years as an intersex person. This means I was born physically not male or female....but intersex. This lead to a journey of secrecy and shame, forced operations to 'fix' me, over 30 years of lies and isolation.
Facing this trauma over the past 5 years and since realising that I'm also trans, non binary, pansexual and ultimately queer af!.....Ive faced so much and grown so much. I feel like, whatever your personal journey involves...the moment that you start to 'come out' to others as your true self, and you start to face your truth without cringing and without covering your eyes or turning away or disassociating....you can truly start to blossom and to bloom.
I've started off by using this pattern at the centre of my recent release of Hapi Cult hoodies.
Hapi was the Egyptian intersex gxd(dxss) of the Nile and the tagline 'sacrifice everything' surrounding the symbol is a statement of independence. Like a wildfire burns athrough old wood for new foliage to grow, sometimes we need to burn through everything thats being pojected onto us in order to find our inner seeds of truth and allow them to sprout and to flourish and to be seen.
From here, I've begun to make some very basic experiments combining the pattern with characters and scenes from nature. For me, this character is celebrating life...perhaps they are coming out themselves, or perhaps they are dicovering the beauty of the natural world around them, or their own natural beauty in whatever form that takes.
It's a very basic test for now, but from this simple experiment, new ideas and feelings are already starting to form within me. I'll be sharing more every week, so if you'd like to stay up to date, don't forget to subscribe to my mailing list by visiting my home page and scrolling down to the subscription form.
Here's another example of how I've used this symbol in a far more developed piece, several years ago in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. I'll talk more about this mural in a later post...but for now I hope you enjoy these pics :)
You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook to see more of my work.
for more information on the seed of life you can visit here
Thanks for reading and I look forward to sharing more withy you soon :)
In the mean time...
Stay magickal!
Rae