the work of Shahna
Lax
(please click on pictures for larger versions)
Healing the Tree of Life
She
is a Tree of Life to those who sustain
her. In early May 2005 I was asked to do
a commissioned piece incorporating the
lute rose form with a Tree of Life. At
3:38am the following morning I was awakened
with the words: el na rifah na lah-- "Please,
God, please heal her."
These words were originally uttered as a plea by Moses (Numbers 12:13). His sister Miriam, dancer, poet, singer, and prophet, had rebuked him for inappropriate behavior, was turned "white," and subsequently isolated as a leper. The people of Israel would not move without her. Moses, himself mortified, cries out the words with which I was awakened.
Responsively, the Arabic inscription (in Cufic script) at the top of the window reads: "Allah has sent a cure for every disease."
This piece also includes words from the Christian tradition incised in the rose's circle: "The leaves of the Tree of Life are for the healing of nations" (Revelation 22:2).
Photosynthesis is the remarkable alchemical process of transforming light into food. Absorbing and reintroducing the essence of life into a digestible, nutritive, restorative form--is this now the role of the feminine voice of prophesy? Must we heal the tree first, before she may heal us?
Distilled Light
Two
perfume lamps illumine the nature of the
One Divinity.
Together, the Hebrew and Arabic read: Welcome in the Name of the "Womb One" of Benevolence and Compassion.
Shiviti
In
Arabic, the central focusing prayer (Shadda)
that begins la ilaha illala translates:
There is nothing but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God, God is Divine Essence.
In Hebrew, shiviti is the first word of
the centering phrase often placed on the
Eastern wall in Jewish homes and synogogues:
shiviti havaya li-negdi tamid
I equate all as God in relation to myself
forever.
The arabesques each contain rubies, two small and one large, expressive of the One Reality.