The SHEMAH Chart - COPYRIGHT S.A. 2019
The SHEMAH Chart — COPYRIGHT 2019, SAMUEL ABELOW
Color itself is finally revealed to be a profound conveyer of the status of our inner dualism, and a possible path towards connecting to a source of oneness — that is an inner radiance or inner light. So we return to the beginning, to appreciate and perceive the beauty and meaning within light itself — nature. We can, therefore, perceive that shade on surface, openness, emptiness is as valuable as exploring tensions of opposites.
ARTIST STATEMENT 2020
Composed July 2020 (Samuel’s birthday time)
Edited by Johannes Böckmann
This is the first of a series of short essays, on color symbolism as a meditation on personality (expression) — individual and collective.
PART ONE: Mapping Origins
Having delved into world cultures, with a focus on Greek Myth and Jung’s Collected Works Vol 9.1, I set out to map the unconscious imagistically, intuitively discovering color correlations to “complexes” as well as patterns which conveyed these “areas of psychic experience.”
The “SHEMAH Chart” or color system, a uniquely organized rainbow of colors is the result.
Starting at the fundamental basics: The Trickster-Sage and Seductress-Priestess represent the basic tensions inherent in personality, and thus fundamental to the individual perception of reality. Well, as you will see, it’s actually a nested set of multiple oppositions
This fundamental dual multiplicism usually manifests in accordance with gender and other bio-psycho-socially predetermined factors of identity.
And people, caught up in the day-by-day, become vehicles for archetypal forces, which exert their own will on a world stage. The SHEMAH chart on the other hand emphasizes the task of becoming: an ultimate realization of potential (Self) into individual expression (self). In this way, my chart and system reflect Jung's spontaneous, wholeness-seeking methodology. It is an original Map of personality and human expression (culture). Therefore, this map a talisman for seekers; those not willing just to be puppeteered at the hands of unconscious forces.
In contrast and opposition to this realization, we see those who behave as Tricksters (their narcissism bringing along mass movements that have no definite integration, but surely light up the scene), and as Seductresses fashioning our society into and manipulating its inhabitants towards decadent dissociation.
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Despite this, it is possible for the individual to integrate the tensions of opposites, and thus increasingly comprehend the mandala. In the SHEMAH chart the masculine principle is located above, as illumination, coherent ideas and common sense — represented as “solar” — and the lower realm — represented as “lunar” — associated with the feminine principle, being marked by the night, dreams, fantasies, and instincts, located below.
This is the ultimate expression of the basic dualism: heaven and earth. The upper, transcendent, could be associated with “spirit”, and the lower, corporeal, with “soul.” The upper realm longs for connection to the numinosum, from which infinite meaning emerges. The lower realm digs into life, bringing forth commitment to unique reality.
In the next essay, I begin to tie in the ultimate mandala which stemmed from studies of the unconscious, and there associated myths, to the history of artistic production, as laid out best by Otto Rank in “Art & Artist Creative Urge and Personality” as well as Denise Murrel in “Black Models: Painting Modernity.”