This is Panel I from my triptych project. I switched to Liquin mixing mediums in December to speed up the drying process. This depicts the Meshaf Resh myth:
Then he commanded Gabriel to escort Adam into Paradise, and to tell him that he
could eat from all the trees but not of wheat. Here Adam remained for a hundred
years. Thereupon, Melek Tâ’ûs asked God how Adam could multiply and have
descendants if he were forbidden to eat of the grain.
God answered, “I have put the whole matter into thy hands.” Thereupon Melek Tâ’ûs visited Adam and said “Have you eaten of the grain?” He answered, “No, God forbade me.” Melek Tâ’ûs replied and said, “Eat of the grain and all shall go better with thee.” Then Adam
ate of the grain and immediately his belly was inflated.
But Melek Tâ’ûs drove him out of the garden, and leaving him, ascended into heaven. Now Adam was troubled because his belly was inflated, for he had no outlet. God therefore sent a bird to him which pecked at his anus and made an outlet, and Adam was relieved.
Now Gabriel was away from Adam for a hundred years. And Adam was sad and
weeping. Then God commanded Gabriel to create Eve from under the left shoulder
of Adam., Now it came to pass, after the creation of Eve and of all the animals,
that Adam and Eve quarreled over the question whether the human race should be
descended from him or her, for each wished to be the sole begetter of the race. This
quarrel originated in their observation of the fact that among animals both the male
and the female were factors in the production of their respective species. After a
long discussion Adam and Eve agreed on this: each should cast his seed into a jar,
close it, and seal it with his own seal, and wait for nine months. When they opened
the jars at the completion of this period, they found in Adam’s jar two children, male
and female. Now from these two our sect, the Yezidis, are descended.
In Eve’s jar they found naught but rotten worms emitting a foul odor. And God caused nipples to grow for Adam that he might suckle the children that proceeded from his jar.
This is the reason why man has nipples.
Really.
Is this where South Park gets the story of the Biddy, and Bono appears to be nothing but a big turd?
In any case, I left out the “Eve popping out of Adam’s armpit” part, which I’ve previously rendered in pen and ink. That drawing had a giant machine sucking magic gases from Adam’s armpit, and a woman in a burka materializing in a jar, with question marks floating over her head like WTF is going on here? Adam appeared to be in pain during her manifestation..
I find the entire book ridiculous, and highly entertaining. It’s a fake holy book used by Yazidi. It’s like a decoy, a satire of Abrahamic religions, and Melek Taus, the peacock angel, is a central figure in their esoteric religion, but as opposed to Islamic and Christian faiths, this Abrahamic preamble to creation of modern man has Melek Taus (identified as Shaitan, Satan, or the leader of archangels), as not wanting to submit to Adam. The Yazidi maintain that Shaitan/Satan is not evil, and that evil rests in the hearts of people, not in some supernatural creature (satirically represented as a beautiful peacock) and people need to get their stuff together.
I have had really mysterious dreams about caverns in Kale, in Turkey. Maybe these dreams came from the following story. The tale decodes the split between the Seveners and the Twelvers:
During this period, the Imams settled in Salamiyya, near Hamma in Syria, but their identity and whereabouts were known only to a few completely trusted disciples. The four Imams who had succeeded Imam Ismail – Muhammd ibn Ismail, Wafi Ahmad, Taqi Muhammad, and Radi Abdullah – while maintaining anonymity, were engaged in the creation of a remarkable network of mission centers equipped with a very well-developed and organized religious philosophy which came to be known as dawa [14]. The term dawa – although used by some non-Ismaili circles – was the skillful organization and a highly elaborate and sophisticated network of communication within the community and unique to the Ismailis. [15]. The Ismaili faith retained its vitality in this period, during which the identities of the Imams remained protected, living as they were in hazardous circumstances. This period has been described as dawr- al-satar (period of concealment). – Wikipedia
I studied occult literature tradition of people who settled in Kurdistan some years back. I had wanted to develop a comparison of those stories peculiar to societies who are constantly being invaded and conquered by larger countries, People who sometimes are conquered simultaneously by rival countries. How do such people protect their cultural heritage when they are forced to abandon their own in order to survive? How do they survive adopting conflicting mythologies at the same time? What secrets they must protect, I never really fully understood it. I knew the information I was getting about them seemed farcical, and that I might have been studying an elaborate joke created as a smokescreen. I mean, early Christians had a fish symbol, a coded message. The Yazidi had to maintain a coded system of beliefs long past the fall of Rome. Their myths survived the rise of Islam, and I would love to learn more, but I have to admit what I know sounds like a total put-on. Anyways, this was a fun piece, not highly technical. It’s ugly, sloppy, nasty and disjointed, like a poorly told epic, where stories follow one another seemingly without context, until ending for no discernible reason other than a pile of anecdotes must end. Like an intestine needs an ending. Gross!
The next panel will be much more interesting. It will be beautiful in color, in content, in style. It will be in jade. I’ve already begun sketching it out on canvas. It is meant to connect the first panel with the third, and serve as an overall statement of this binding process of the base, carnal and earthly phenomena of being alive in a material plane with the spiritual, or emergent, state of losing one’s identity in a state of transcendent awareness. The second panel anchors many stories and cultures which overlap. Synchronous stories found in seemingly different people’s myths at different times in history. And it is whimsical, even sentimental. This leads to the third panel.
Fifty State Banana 