Dwayne and Teresa: For almost nine months now, we have co-created a painting at the time of the New Moon. Each session has occurred in synch with the symbolism of The Lightning Path and many other sources of mythic inspiration.Native American spirituality influences us deeply. Our ritual encounter always begins with a purifying smudge of each other and of our environment with sage and sweetgrass. We are fed by various forms of spirituality, both Eastern and Western. The lineage of tantric painters who have preceded us, the gods and goddesses of the Vedic tradition, the wisdom of Taoism and Buddhism, the unconditional love of Christ consciousness, all have served to enrich us on our many Moons journey into Mystery. Our quest is to comprehend and apply the most universal principles of being we can evoke.

A shared attitude of gratitude invariably guides us into the sanctuary of peace residing at the core of Self. We know that center to be universal. From this looks-within place we spiral outwards in our creativity.

In this month's painting encounter, the first shapes we laid down were a subconscious response to the dramatic presence of hurricane Katrina in the southern US. A hurricane reveals a profound resolution of polarity: on the one hand, an overwhelming maelstrom of diversity, on the other, an enigmatic singularity.

Many years ago, Native American medicine man Black Elk spoke of this same Spirit thus:

The Power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. Everything the Power does is done in a circle. The sky is round and I have heard that the Earth is round like a ball, and so are the stars. The wind in its greatest power whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The Sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The Moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is in a circle from childhood to childhood , and so it is in everything where Power moves.

As we traveled the path of our two-day painting process, we understood the wind spiraling around the central eye of hurricane Katrina to be none other than the universal breath of Spirit evoked by the ninth phrase in our Invocation of Sovereignty for the current lunar year:

Drifts endlessly through Dreamtime .

Number 9 is associated with Nature's grand cycles within the never-ending story of Creation. We saw the hurricane event as a graphic illustration of the powers inherent in it

Click the following image for a complete slideshow of this month's painting process.