Mandorla Rising:
Reflections and Explorations into the Other Within and the Life, Work and My Life with Mythsinger Daniel Deardorff
Judith-Kate Friedman
A Creative Dissertation Project for the Poetics of Imagination M.A.
Welcome
Mandorla Rising is a myth-informed, multi-dimensional collection of poetry, art, music, film, performance and story. It is also an experiential vessel, intended to contain, kindle and stir generative inquiry, creative expression and healing.
The emergent nature of this Project has been multivalent, tactile, sonic and mysterious, upwelling through body and soul before mind, in the manner of oral traditions, only later translated through pen, pastel and technology into written and other fixed forms.
Through my research and practice, I have found that the mandorla–the liminal portal of paradox between overlapping circles of opposites–is a node of transmission as well as a dwelling place for ‘the heart of the hearer and the heart of the teller.’ Its depth—and sometimes confoundingly complex simplicity—is both deeply inside and beyond us. Its implicate presence can be a guide for how to live in balance with all of Creation.
I invite you to join me as we follow the Call: from communion with the Living World, to adventures in the underworld and underside of myth and ‘otherness’ through a trickster’s homecoming into confirming celebrations all about love.
–Judith-Kate Friedman
