Downloadable WORD document March 6, 2025
THEMES
Soul World
SAN FRANCISCO AUTUMN, 1972
Andrei Tarkovsky
August in San Francisco, with the swirling fog and the cool breezes; August, when one looks to the other side of the month, towards September, a distant orange glow dispersing through the foggy beam of a lighthouse; August, a time when one’s breath is held in suspense.
However, the month has passed. The grandfather clock’s seasonal hands have moved as August’s meteoric forces retreat into September.
Thomas Fenn
Yes, there are so many fragmented images now, like pieces of a mosaic scattered on the floor of a church after an earthquake.
I shall be vigilant under your instruction, taking care in my heart to listen carefully to your interventions during my recount and not fall into reverie.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
Thank you, Thomas. Let us enter, therefore, the seasonal atmosphere of Autumn which is so fundamental and replete. We shall replay some reflective memories that converge from various pinpoints in the past. We shall then orient more towards the architecture of our work by ensuring that the point of our compass is carefully pinned as we gracefully trace sweeping arcs like the moving feet of a child swinging through the air.
Thomas Fenn
Yes, I am ready to re-gather myself once again and return to this period.
I shall visualize myself as that child on the swing as you push me higher and higher.
Andrei Tarkovsky
A lovely and bright image!
Thomas Fenn
And so we are in September, 1972.
September in San Francisco is very hot, and although the light softens with the shorter days and elongated shadows, it is still very bright to the eyes, especially after the quiet greys from the foggy season.
Only by walking to Golden Gate Park could I return to the solace of the shade, which I preferred to the direct sunlight, especially during this fragile period so soon after our experience.
I would walk along the grey-coloured sidewalks, the sharp sunlight reflecting into one’s eyes off the windows of the Victorian houses and the mirrors of the parked cars to finally arrive in Golden Gate Park.
I remember walking to the same cypress tree each time, and I would crawl under the shiny green umbrella leaves and feel the pungent aroma through her scent and there I would huddle like a child in a wooden attic during an ocean storm, the rain tapping on the inclined roof.
In retrospect, however, September in San Francisco leaves little trace relative to the Autumns in New England. Here, I remember the pristine light so distinct after the cotton-like thickness in the stagnant August air.
How familiar it was to walk through the puffy piles of coloured leaves, listen to the swishing sound of one’s steps, bury oneself under a pile, and watch the sunlight blink through the spaces in between.
I particularly remember the enchanted moments of September at the very onset of junior high school, especially preparing the new notebooks with the crisp white-lined paper placed in stacks between the dividers equipped with coloured plastic inserts, then placing the stack onto the metal rings and finally clicking the metal rings shut with a large snap. How clean those notebook papers were, ready to absorb the thick ink from a new fountain pen. So many new words to copy down in cursive handwriting.
It was also during this period that my maternal grandparents invited my parents to travel for their first time to Europe. It was certain that my grandfather was the initiator and guide for this trip. He was suited for such a role. He was erudite, born at the end of the nineteenth century and received a classical education at Harvard University. He subsequently became a shoe leather distributor, travelled extensively to Europe, and became fluent in French and Italian. Interestingly, thirty years later, when I visited Boston, I would meet with him for coffee, and we would speak exclusively in Italian.
In retrospect, this is very significant. Is it not?
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
You are correct, Thomas. It is especially significant that he should accompany your parents at that time, and we shall, therefore, pin another leg of our compass to this point as we uncover more interlocking events within the panorama of your perspective.
Thomas Fenn
Thank you. I shall remain vigilant as there are so many rivulets, like tiny cracks in the flat wet sand, that one is tempted to follow.
And so it was September 1963, and I was brought to stay with my uncle and aunt while my parents were on their voyage. I experienced a very deep nostalgia after their departure as though I were living my memory of them after their death. There was no traumatic anticipation that they would die; it was not like that but rather a most profound wistfulness for the distant past.
A song deeply touched me at that time whose lyrics ironically were:
Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow
Try to remember and if you remember
Then follow, follow
My uncle, Robert and his wife, Carol, were the parents of Robin, whom I mentioned earlier; they also had a son named Lucas, who re-emerges decades later from the depths of the unconscious as a powerful force.
Notwithstanding the tall shadows hovering around Robin and Lucas, I have no direct recollection of their presence during this particular stay —not even one interaction. I find this nearly inexplicable.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
Thomas, let us move further and deeper into the currents beneath September, 1963 in order to approach these blank absences appearing now as black holes penetrating your awareness
In fact, there is an absence of three years in living memory, is there not? – between the years 1958 and 1961, that is, between the age of eight and eleven.
Thomas Fenn
Oh yes. This is troubling, really, because your are right I do not have personal memories during that period. My first glimmer of memory after age eleven was from the summer of 1962 when visiting a childhood friend on the northern coast of Massachusetts, perhaps Swampscott. I remember my friend’s name and his mother and the little house they had by the ocean. The image in this memory is associated with the summer vacation sites on the coast of Northern England with the bustling boardwalks, blustery winds, and fish and chips. But this memory is so odd like watching an old film of one’s relatives before one’s physical birth.
At this point, I cannot say whether this specific visit even occurred. I have no context for this visit nor do I recall a history of knowing this friend outside of this visit, even if he existed.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
We shall pentrate this uncomfortable perplexity by introducing another concept to which we refer as a memory sequence out of context. This experience differs from a dateless memory, which arises within the instantaneity of perception from an inexplicable source. Instead, a memory out of context appears as a scenario of sequential events and yet retains the flavour of a dream. Of course, one may attempt to fit these sequences of events into date and time and rightfully so, but they will still be unfamiliar, like a deja vu, and one is left with the peculiar doubt as to whether they occurred.
In this regard, Thomas, do you remember reciting the Role of God in a medieval play called Everyman.
Thomas Fenn
Yes, vividly. And yet it is, as you say, very strange. I cannot place when I would have had this experience. I was involved with theatre acting when I was in my adolescence, that is true. In 1967, I participated in a summer drama workshop, a paradisial moment in my life, but I do not recall reciting a significant role in any of the productions. And two years before that, in 1965, my parents enlisted me in a tennis camp, and as an extracurricular activity, we put on a production by Sholem Aleichem. I believe I had a major role in that play.
However, my recitation in Everyman remains clear. It was most definitely an event that took place within a time-frame, as I recall memorizing the many lines for my role. Of course, as you say, I may try to fit this event somewhere into my linear past but it would be a forced conclusion like trying to explain away the pain of a tooth ache.
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
Yes, that is correct. You played the role of God as presented in the Prologue. You recited his lament for humanity’s downward plunge into materialism and their abandonment of the spiritual realm.
However, it is of underlying significance that this play emerges from the Tudor period, corresponding to the Italian Renaissance, marking the transition from the fourth to the fifth epoch, and it is through this recitation that we begin to witness the shadows of the major arcana appearing over the horizon of your early adolescence.
Andrei Tarkovsky
So, we are beset by a parallel world disconnected from our historical remembrances, which contain these inexplicable realities of experience.
We refer to this world as the soul world. One cannot perceive the soul world in time but rather in duration. It is the atmosphere through which the breath transforms into the world of astrality in the same way that oxygen is transformed through the sentient body to become the living vitality of humans and animals.
And so we understand that the soul world is a camera oscura that projects the astral and etheric realities within which our epic is revealed and composed.
Antoine Artaud
In the experience of the soul world, there is a resonating counterpoint between disparate realities, like echoes of owls over the deep caverns of the inner stratum. Although these echoes reverberate in a foreign tongue, they instil themselves within one’s sense of continuous identity by splicing different time dimensionalities into one continuum. Herein, we experience shades of duration.
Thomas Fenn
May I interject, please, and ask you to describe in more detail the form of the soul world. How may we discover her geometry in time?
Caithlin Ni Houlihan
When one closes one’s eyes and shifts into breathing, one begins from the lower extremity of the rib cage just above the core or the abdomen and then breathes vertically into either side of the rib cage.
The initiate may simultaneously induce the single breath to proceed along the back along the length of the spine to the back of the skull; this occurs as the inhaled breath moves to the top of the nostrils so that the levels of breathing are all connected.
The initiate, having traced the three-dimensional form of the torso and skull, is now in a position to move under the skin through an intermediate sheath located at the lower extremity of the back to discover the inner space of the oval-shaped torso and then upwards to discover the inner space of the spherical skull.
This transformation of breath results in living visualization, the first glimmer of clairvoyance, and it is within this enlivened visualization that one experiences the soul world.
Remember, breath retains her relation to the physical body through sensations from the sentient realm or the sentient body. This perception of sensation lends continuity to identity in time which lends awareness of this world.
At this point, let us listen to a recitation of an entry from our old journal that paints an inner image of the soul world beyond spiritual science.