by RaHuNath / Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule
KALI - ARACHNE STATUE
Inspired by travels in India last year (’05) and the
constant housing of deity in sculptural forms there,
upon return to Australia I felt inspired to create a
life-size Kali statue. Other elements of my occultural
work and play came into the piece also as it evolved,
so that it is now Kali-Arachne, a deification of Fate
as well as the cycles of death and birth.
The idea of using snakes for hair (and real
snake-skins to re-sew and stuff appeared as if on cue
immediately following this idea) spawned a Medusaen
aspect to the statue also, which has thus come to
represent several primal Goddesses rolled into one.
Clay is the perfect medium for this primal expression,
being so earthy and ancient.
Above is an image of Giselle wearing the face of the
Kali statue as a mask, emerging from the mud-pit at
new year ’06 Confest festival for a film shoot, with
Orryelle providing the extra arms.
The statue is being made in pieces that can be
individually fired then joined into a whole.
Below is a picture of one of Her (four) hands, which
has smaller figures within it:
As shown in the animated .gif above, the eyes of the
statue’s face can roll back in their sockets. This
kinesis can be operated with a wire lever on one side
of the head, which when turned also raises the serpent
on the other side of the head.
The clay face of the statue has been used several
times as a mask to perform a dance about Kala, the
Hindu God of Time and Eternity, emerging from Kali as
the Void. Here is a composite image I made from photos
(by Giselle Aquila) of this dance:
KALI-ARACHNE DANCE PROJECT
The statue in progress has inspired an intricate
group dance project:
The premise of this performance is to express in form
and movement the relationship of the individual to the
collective, exploring also concepts of microcosm and
macrocosm and Fate versus Free Will (and how this
apparent paradoxical duality can be resolved), and the
nature of Deification.
11 dancers together form the face and hands of a
giant figure of Kali-Arachne, a composite deity
representing both the multi-armed creator-destroyer
Mother Goddess of the Hindu pantheon, and Arachne as a
spider-being who weaves the connections between
microcosm and macrocosm and also the threads of
Fate/Destiny (as a unification of the Greek Three
Fates or Moerae who as Spinner Weaver and Cutter of
life’s thread are also arachnean in nature).
Individual dancers, expressing their free will,
break away from the composite figure to perform their
own dances, yet these also ultimately weave back into
the pattern of the whole. The fractal or holographic
nature of reality is expressed through the forms and
movements of individual figures echoing the larger
movements of the larger figure they are part of (eg.
The finger movements of an individual dancer echoing
the movements of their legs previously as the fingers
of the bigger figure). This was inspired by the
figures-within-hands of the statue:
There are more pictures of these hand- figures, coming
together to form a spider, at
The concept of Fate is to be explored within the
dance via the metaphor of puppetry, the strings
thereof also relating to the arachnean aspect of the
work/play: Small figures are manipulated by
individual dancers, who are then apparently
manipulated in turn by the larger composite figure.
And Yet, because the bigger figure is a composite, it
is created by the individuals who compose it, this
being a visual and theatrical metaphor for the nature
of deity: We believe in Gods/Goddesses -whether we
call them this or less personalized names such as
Fate, energies or ‘collective consciousness’- and are
therefore ‘controlled’ by them, yet they are a result
of and created by our belief in them.
In the dance of Fate we represent this by becoming
aware of our ‘strings’, tugging at these etheric
strands between us and the larger ‘Hands of Fate’ to
manipulate them back in turn –then breaking away to
perform more individuated dances. Because the Hands
then follow these movements (as it is a part of our
destiny to apparently ‘break away’ from perceived
patterns of destiny) again, we eventually accept our
part in the ‘bigger picture’ and co-create our destiny
with it, embracing rather than struggling with Fate
and acknowledging our part within the collective
reality, both influencing and being influenced by it.
Projections of film montage of the big composite
figure, individual dancers, spiders and webs, and the
life-size Kali-Arachne statue that inspired the Dance
project –all overlaid and interwoven in different
combinations- will also be incorporated (and
interacted with by live dancers) to further express
the fractal aspects of the work.
The individual and collective aspects of the dance-
and their integration together into Maatian
‘Double-Consciousness’ -relate directly to the concept
of N’aton or the group-mind, and thus this Dance is
considered to be a result of the recently-culminated
Magickal Childe Project of the 11-Star Working of the Horus-Maat Lodge.
Both the Dance Production and the Statue will be
ready by June Solstice and will be performed and
exhibited to coincide with the release of the new
revised and expanded edition of my book on Time, Fate
and Spider Magick: http://www.crossroads.wild.net.au/yrotsreh.htm
