Literature

All you want to know about story telling, naïve art (folk art)  and symbolism.
Celestine and the Magical Geranium. © B.Sala	Celestine and the Magical Geranium is a fairy tale written by naive painter Barbara Sala.  Celestine, the main character is hungry to experience life.  A seed has been entrusted to her, but she is not yet aware of its existence.   The seed matures in the darkness of a potato bag and later in the warm and moist earth. When Celestine enters her garden, she is surprised to see the seed has grown into a magnificent flower. She falls in love with its beauty, just like a mother falls in love with her new-born baby. She takes loving care of this unexpected gift and the plant grows and grows into the sky.
	Celestine begs Geranium to stop growing, but Geranium can’t. Which kind of growing are we talking about?
Celestine and the Magical Geranium. © B.Sala	Symbolically Celestine represents our material body and Geranium our soul that uses this body as a vehicle to learn and grow by experiencing its potential in the earthen sphere.  Celestine and Geranium are one.   The flower thrives on a kingdom island and people from neighboring kingdoms are attracted by its unique radiance.  Geranium is generous and shares her gifts with the world.  But she cannot satisfy the never-ending flow of people.  She becomes weak and tired.  In the end she has to die and to resurrect through new seeds.
Symbolically, this process describes the expansion of our consciousness on earth from incarnation to incarnation.  The unfulfilled potential is the motivation that brings us back into a new incarnation on earth.  This is the mysterious force that flows from seed to seed to infinity.
	Why would a naive painter create such a symbolic fairytale?   “Fairytales are a unique art form”, says Bruno Bettellheim in his book “The Uses of Enchantment”.   Fairytales are the bridges between our conscious and unconscious worlds.  They are comprehensible for a child and for an adult who has retained or reconquered through life’s experience, an exuberance and connection to his Inner Self.  When naive painters paint they become storytellers and in their childlike style they  weave dreamlike fantasies and symbolic tales on canvass.
Henri Rousseau
Naive painters are visionaries.  Celestine and the Magical Geranium is a visionary folktale.  It tells us that everything changes and nothing is lost. Through the distribution of seed thoughts, other minds are being touched and become the fertile ground for these seeds to grow and multiply.
Naive art is an art form that cannot be learned.  It comes from the heart, that’s why naive painters are also called “Painters of the Heart”.  They paint spontaneously and trust the images from the unconscious without analyzing them.  With each new painting they rediscover the world.
© Edward Hicks, ”Peaceable Kingdom”	The word “naive” in connection with paintings was used for the first time in the beginning of the 20th century, describing the style of Henri Rousseau (1844 – 1910).  It was rather an expression of contempt, when compared to the style of Picasso , Braque,  Monet,  Modigliani. etc. Whereas  the art of the child is a style of social transition,  naive art is the creative expression of adults who have had interesting life experiences. Naive art transcends any artistic movement. It is timeless. There are hundreds and hundreds of naive painters throughout the world whose paintings I love and greatly admire. I will only mention a few who have impressed me or who I have met.
Besides Henri Rousseau, “Le Douanier”, I cherish the paintings by  Anna Mary Robertson or  “Grandma Moses”.  She started to paint late in life and lived until 101.  The “Peaceable Kingdom” by Edward  Hicks (1780 – 1849) is one of the images that nourishes my mind.
“Le bonhomme Carnaval"  © Yvon M. Daigle	Internationally famous are the Haitian and Yugoslave naive painters.  In Quebec, where I am living, there is a strong naive tradition.  One of the important naive painters is Arthur Villeneuve (1910 – 1990), who painted every  wall and door of his house, inside and outside. Personally I have met and exposed with Marie Gelinas, Anne-Marie Bost and Guy Boulizon (1906 – 2003).  A close friend of mine Yvon M. Daigle, who is also a naive painter has founded the only international naïve art museum in Canada which is called “Musee international d’art naive Yvon M. Daigle”, Magog, Quebec (www.museedartnaive.org).
Naive painters live surrounded by their modern reality, but on canvass they will change this through their unique vision filled with the poetry of simplicity. It is because of this simplicity that naive paintings are often called “childlike”.
"Marjolaine”  © B.Sala	My paintings are created with my limitations in  perspective and form. My people are dressed in baggy clothes, which eliminates my problem with drawing the human body and “Marjolaine” has her feet in water which hides them. I did not  discover naive art.  To the contrary, one could say that  naive art discovered me: “One day, as I was playingthe piano, pictures appeared in my mind to the rhythm of the music.  I witnessed scenes from my childhood, children dancing, animals and a funeral procession.
There was no drama to this, but rather a “sense of love and gentleness…. It was a marvelous discovery and from then on I opened up to the magical world flowering with images, dreams and stories.“ (Naive… ces peintres du Quebec et de l’Acadie, by Guy Boulizon, Yvon Daigle, Anne-Marie Bost, Editions du Trecarre, 1989)
"The velvet flower coat" © B. Sala	The Pegasus and the couple in “The velvet flower coat” stand so highly above the landscape because their love fills their entire universe. The “Burden of her childhood” is so all consuming and fills out her inner being, as she drags this burden through her adult life.  Everything else is small in comparison. Each figure is a symbol of my inner life and every onlooker relates to it differently with his or her own life experience.
In conclusion and considering the above mentioned, Celestine and the Magical Geranium is not only for children, but for grown-ups as well.  Its wisdom,  like in most fairytales, is hidden, but speaks to the soul of everyone.
Naive painters of the world,  I salute you!  © 2005-2009 Barbara Sala
"Carrying the burden of her childhood” © B. Sala   bsala@sympatico.ca www.barbaranaiveart.com

In the Hermetic philosophy, the alchemical process is said to unfold through cyclic events very much as do the passing of the seasons of nature as the winter, spring, summer and fall. That is to say, that what our matter undergoes in changes, such as the color changes that represent the different stages of the alchemical process, can very much be expressed allegorically through the passing of the yearly seasons of nature as the black winter, followed by the white blossoming spring, the red hot summer, and the golden Autumn, when our fruit is ready for the harvest. 

For those who live in the northern hemisphere, and who are preparing to enter into the winter months, it is a befitting time to dwell upon the allegorical symbolism of the blackening of winter. In this time, as our days are shortened and our nights are lengthened, a somber and darkening condition is felt in an all-embracing sense. Nature enters into a state of sleep, which very much alludes to a sort of death as the external activities of nature slow down. Consciousness itself collectively seems to be reduced as creatures of many kinds hide for the hibernation season. The plants, flowers, trees and all kinds of vegetation become dormant and lifeless as they loose their vivid colors and give way to the blackening and darkness of winter.

It seems a very sorry state, melancholic and very depressing. Yet if we look a little deeper into the esoteric principles that are transpiring, we will see that this blackness is really a blessed darkness as is seen by the philosophers. A cold stillness of death and darkness may have overshadowed the world, yet a new life and regeneration is warming and brooding within her very bosom, within the very seeds of life itself.

This brings us to an other very important symbolism and allegory, the alchemical symbolism of the “Seed and the Field”. It is in the fall, prior to the beginning of winter that the farmers and agriculturists plant their seeds into the earth. This is to ensure that the seed can have the time to undergo the alchemical process of the dissolution. In order for the seed to bear fruit, it must die, break, be opened and be readied for just the right time to germinate and come to life when the etheric energies of life pour out their greatest influence on it in the Spring. As the ‘All’ is ‘One’, and as the All is in all, we can readily understand that the forces of nature that operate in the macrocosm, are also the forces that operate in the microcosm of man. There must therefore also be a certain correspondence between the outer activities of nature, and the inner process of the transformation and elevation of man’s soul and consciousness. Thus the greater forces of nature can be found in the little universe of man himself. Therefore through this correspondence that exists between the outer and the inner world, there can be seen a sort of mirroring in the processes of nature’s regeneration as the unfolding of the energies of life, and the regeneration of man and the cyclic events transpiring in the unfolding of his soul and consciousness.

The seed of our soul representing the vulgar gold of the alchemists, and the ego consciousness as a separation from that which is the universal, is placed in the black earth as the womb and the raw richness of the darkness of the unconscious, the tomb of Osiris or the sepulcher of Christ. In this tomb, after putrefying, it is reborn and blooms to full flower and grows into the full expression of the potentiality it held. It is in the cycle of the winter of our consciousness, that as a seed, we are placed into the earth to be broken, to be opened, to mortify, to putrefy and enter our tomb, where we come face to face with the depth of our inner darkness. Oh what a sorry state, what an agonizing situation. How can this be the blessed darkness of the alchemists?

  This darkness of the tomb, the cultivation of the earth and the field, readily brings to mind the Saturnian aspect of matter and the body. In the Bhagavad-Gita the body is called the field, and those who know this are called the connoisseurs of the field. In the Zohar it is said, “ those alone to whom the mysteries are confided, are called the cultivators of the fields.” The Hermetic Triumph says that, “ The Stone is a Field that the wise cultivate, into which Nature and Art have planted the seed that must produce its fruit.” 

In Basil Valentine’s eighth key we see a man rising out of the grave. Two men with crossbows sit and aim at a square target with a circular bulls-eye, and a key standing above it indicating that in putrefaction is the key to the process. They have attained this since they have hit the bull’s eye. In the center of the picture we see a grave out of which a resurrected man is emerging. To the left of this, vegetation is sprouting representing the fruition of our seed. In the foreground a corpse lies in a ploughed field showing us that the seed which is not placed in the earth does not resurrect. A man on the left is sowing grain, and is greeted by a winged angel with scepter, sounding a trumpet. Black birds behind the man are eating the grain, which is an allegory of the dissolution. Basil Valentine says that, “neither human nor animal bodies can be multiplied or propagated without decomposition; the grain and all vegetable seed, when cast into the ground, must decay before it can spring up again.”

To everything there is a season, and our black winter will give way to our blossoming spring, where if we have kept our vigil, we will understand the words of Corinthians 15,36-44, “what was sown in the earth as a perishable thing is raised imperishable.” Let us then obey the laws of nature and “follow in her footsteps”. Let us look forward to the seasons and let us always be prepared for the work that is to be done in them as the blackening of winter, the white blossoming spring, the red hot summer and the golden autumn.

Steve Kalec can be reached at skalec@videotron.ca