“Journey at Twilight, 29” – Acrylic, Ash on Masonite Panel – 24” x 48”

by Martin Bridge

This piece was painted in its entirety during the 29th annual Twilight Covening held by the EarthSpirit Community. Twilight Covening is an intensive weekend-long ritual experience during which individuals spend a large portion of the event in their “clans,” each of which has an individual focus to deepen some aspect of one’s spiritual practice. Clans focus on anything from astrology and divination to yoga, drumming, breath-work and other esoteric practices.

This year I led the Orb Weaver clan along with Kaye Kittredge. Our clan’s work was focused for individuals to deepen their artistic and creative practices in relationship with their spiritual lives, as well as creating as a part of a ritual practice.

We set to work as the event began Friday night, observing and translating the events, energies and landscape into symbolic form. Continuing through the next day, we also translated and distilled some key elements of Sunday’s Visioning ritual into symbols that many of us wove into our paintings, which later graced the space where the community waited inside before leaving for the journey into the night.

For, me the second I arrived on the beautiful mountaintop, graced by peak New England autumn color, I was flooded with imagery that all could have been translated into a piece. I fed my attachment to any resulting outcome to Friday night’s releasing fires, so that I could focus on pulling in the imagery and energies that I encountered over the subsequent days into the piece as it evolved. The releasing fires themselves, the hillsides casting their shadowy reflections on the lake as one moon looming above and another on the water, raindrops on the water’s surface, branches, faces, Agility, Strength, Patience, Love, Courage, and Wisdom all wove themselves into this work over the weekend.

For those of you not familiar with the Earthspirit Community, it was founded in the 1970’s and is centered in the hills of Western Mass. where I live, but also extends far from here. It is an organization whose purpose is the preservation and development of Earth-centered spirituality, culture and community – especially regarding the indigenous pre-Christian traditions of Europe – through education, practice and by organizing public rituals and events. The largest of these events are “Twilight Covening” each October, “Rites of Spring” every May and “A Feast of Lights” at the very end of January, where the Faery Seership “Vision Keys” that I have shared here will be on display. [A Feast of Lights will be held Jan.30 – Feb. 1, 2015 in Northampton, Massachusetts. For further information, please go to http://www.earthspirit.org]

For more information about Martin Bridge’s art, please go to: www.thebridgebrothers.com and www.facebook.com/martinbridgeart