I asked my dear friend Phill, a digital artist, to create for me a sacred image to signify, formally, a role I’d been given. A man overseas invited me into a tradition of dragon magic with communities in various countries – an honour. I loved and admired him; I already worked with dragons; I agreed. Each locality was designated a ‘tor,’ mine named for the town where I live.
I requested a design suggesting our local mountain: viewed from my location, ia high, pointed summit on the left, then two humps descending to the right. I saw it shaping the word ‘Am,’ for Being. Asked what colours I'd like, I chose green and purple, the colours of the Women’s Movement. (I've since learned that there is a sacred Indgenous women's site on the mountain .)
Phill put this image inside a sphere. He added – unasked, but inspired – a seven-pointed star in the background, symbol of the Faery realm, in a form that could be viewed as loosely woven fabric or gently radiating light.
The magical man’s dragon tradition grew warlike. It was metaphorical; even so, I rejected that identification. The dragons I knew were benevolent. I couldn’t, in conscience, establish a branch of his tradition here. I resigned. He saw this as betrayal.
He had overcome many challenges, requiring a warrior’s mind-set, so I didn’t seek to change him but I wouldn’t join him. He cut off all communication with me.
I decided to keep the symbol I'd designed, reclaiming it as a statement of my own being, my own connection to the mountain (which I have felt from the first encounter).
The artist, my soul-brother, died: cancer, sudden and quick. From his hospital bed, at my request, witnessed by his family, he gave me permission to save all his digital art to do whatever I like with. I've no particular plans; I just didn’t want it lost if his website lapsed.
Later, it happened that I was one of a group of white Australians given by a local Indigenous elder the freedom of this land, Githabul land. It includes the mountain.
sometimes at twilight
I look up at the mountain
and glimpse a dragon –
its shadowy back a swathe
along the darkening ridge
Written for Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #120: A Touch of Formality
