Magic of Knots - 2025 02 15

 

836 am

Drawing together at the dining table on Thursday evening I tried a new experiment. I decided to see what would happen if I combined a topographical map with a celtic knot.

For weeks this winter a discarded book of maps sat outside in our neighbours yard getting soaked, frozen and covered in snow. I walked past it almost everyday, thinking it would get picked up and thrown in the trash. 

During this period, over these same weeks, the Trump/Musk regime came to power in the USA. I had been depressed and disheartened by the outcome of the US election in November. I was overwhelmed with a grief losing my Mom in early October, and then losing hope for humanity after the election. 

At the same time, I carried on with my creative work, digging in deeper to the magic of sharing music, writing and art making with my friends and neighbours. I started hosting Thursday evenings at my dining table to sit and draw together and talk. I wasn’t used to socializing while I was drawing and my results were an interesting mix of surprised delight and perplexing strange drawings. 

I was out walking the dog thinking about the drawing I would do at the next session. I was also thinking about the collapse of democracy worldwide and the forces of patriarchy that sowed seeds of its own destruction in its organizational structures. And there was that soaked, forlorn book of maps laying in the frozen snow. It was the ‘Times Atlas of the World’ Reference Edition. I could not see what year it was published - many of the pages are stuck together. I picked it up and brought it inside.

Thirty years ago I started drawing Celtic knots as a way to process an untenable marriage to a domestic abuser. I was in a constant state of surviving neuro-targeting that made me doubt my competence, my agency, and my autonomy. Somehow the spiritual principle of ‘many are one’ and ‘one is many’ and the technical challenge of design, paper, inks and pens all helped me extricate myself from domestic violence. I started a new life far away from that household. Today I have started drawing Celtic knots again.

In hindsight, I can see how the parallels of domestic violence and neuro-targeting between the current geo-politics to undermine democracy and my experience as a victim of domestic abuse. I am triggered by the daily experience of disinformation, propaganda, and projection flowing as if from a fire hose from right wing political parties. 

The bedraggled book of maps signifies the state of humanity and world affairs at this moment of patriarchal extinction burst. The Celtic knots signify the magic of emergence, of new understandings and actions arising from the complexity and mystery of embarking on radical change.

On Thursday night I pulled a page from the book of maps. I was thinking about the west coast of the US - California, Oregon and Washington - fighting fires, fighting off Trumpian destruction. I picked out a knot design from my handbook and made a start to overlay the knot design onto the map.

It was an interesting process, a puzzle to solve, especially when my knot design did not work as expected. I persevered and ended up with a coherent path of geometry, overlapping, and finally a point of connection. In the process a section had to be left out, it hovers in its space, awaiting further development. 

The next morning I was looking at the result and realized I had positioned the knot over the geographic area where my family has a farm. Not a week ago I had spoken with my family. They were expressing their anxiety at the current political situation and wondering how to cope. We talked about using our creative works to help us find trustworthy friends and neighbours. We talked about how our creative works can help us make new connections, even to seeming ‘adversaries’ who have been targeted into accepting hateful points of view.

The Celtic knot took on a new meaning in that moment, a shield of hope and protection, a small thing that I could do at a distance, in hopes that the alignment of energies in the universe would somehow keep my family and farm safe during the dark times ahead.

It gives me hope to contemplate these layers of meaning, to find a new perspective when I am consumed with despair. It gives me hope to work on a drawing or write a song, or even write about these creative works. 

We are not alone. We are in this together. We will find a way.