"Angelic Presence"
A 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT
(August, 2025)
Photographs made in 2014
(in Salem, Maine, Vermont & New York)
Inspired by the Art of Paul Klee & the
Writings of Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham
Two Textural Preludes
In Klee's work, the angel is connected both to his conception of himself
as an artist and to aspects of his artistic theory and approach.
He merges the figures of artist and angel into one
another and "in doing so reveals an under-
standing of himself as 'intermediary'
and 'messenger'"--just as his art
closes the gap between
the visible and
the invisible,
between
figuration and abstraction.
G. Wedekind, from his book Paul Klee: The Angels
* * *
The Angel cannot be understood in anthropomorphic terms alone. The Heavenly Twin is the personification of a process of perception and a way of feeling. The cosmic function of angelophanies is to open our senses to the fullness of being beyond the confines of the material world of secular history.
Whenever we feel wonder at the beauty and mystery of the world, it is due to this aspect of the Angel. The most creative scientists are awake to the world this way. Many poets and artists live in the constant presence of the Angel.
Living in the tension between the human and the transcendent can be an agony. This cosmic aspect of the Angelic presence is its transhuman Face. Tom Cheetham : After Prophecy
Introduction
The photographs presented below were made between mid-August and Mid-September, 2014 when my wife Gloria and I had traveled to Vermont in mid-August for a family gathering at Jim and Phyllis's house; then in mid-September we traveled to Maine to spend time in the Acadia National Park. On the way to Maine we stopped for a day and a night exploring Salem, Mass.
While in Vermont, in August, I accidentally fell down a stairway and suffered a mild concussion and ten experienced an awesome vision of an angel during a healing session with a message therapist (who was part of our family gathering). I had already begun my Homage Project to Paul Klee, The Angels at that time and I had been reading about angels by the two scholars-philosophers-mystics-poets, Henry Corbin & Tom Cheetham, both of whom wrote about Angels, mostly from an Islamic-Sufic (mystical-philosophical) perspective.
We had stopped in Salem, in September, on our way to Maine, because Gloria had been reading about the persecution of women in Salem who had been accused of being witches. During our one day and night stay in Salem we both experienced "angelic" or "ghost" encounters.
Of course I had been photographing in Vermont, Salem and Maine under the powerful spell of the Angels project which I had already been working on, and reading about, then with my fall down some stairs, and the concussion (and the visionary experience that followed it during a healing session) I thought it would be interesting to try photographing in Vermont with the concussion. That experiment then continued during the time we were back home and then traveling again to Salem and Maine. I'm suspect my experience of Angelic Presence was heightened by the fall, the concussion and the visionary experience that graced the healing session during the message therapy, but I had already been tuned into that "world" from the reading I had been doing.
I consciously extended my photographing experiment when we got back home to Canandaigua, NY with my interior photographs in our house I had been making since the Covid Pandemic and the Meadow series photographs I had been working on continuously since 2008 when we moved to Canandaigua from Milwaukee after I retired from teaching. The meadow is directly behind our back yard, with its two ponds, and the tapering woods in the background.
* * *
The project before you now is an abbreviated 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT version of the earlier, much larger seven-part blog project The Angels I had created after I returned home from our 2014 August trip to Vermont, then our September 2014 trip to Salem and Arcadia National Park, in Maine. Very few of the images in the 2014 Angels project (which I published on November 1, 2014) had ever been printed, and I have always felt that my Angel experiences in Vermont, Salem & Maine never got the exposure they should have gotten on my blog due to their original inclusion in the large, complex scale of the seven-part project. A few images in this project were not included, or the are changed versions of what was first published in 2014.
I hope you will explore my earlier project, The Angels for it provides the larger context that surrounds much of what I have presented here in this more brief inkjet print version under the the new title Angelic Presence.
All of my photography as been influenced in a very powerful way through my practice of Siddha Yoga Meditation (which began in August, 1987 after a two-day meditation Intensive with Gurummayi Chidvilasananda). In Siddha Yoga the primary teachings are about the divine Presence that pervades the entire Universe and every thing, place, space and (most importantly) every human Heart in this world.
(Note: the divine Presence is often referred to--in the Siddha Yoga teachings--as the energy known as Shakti, or the divine Self, Supreme Consciousness, or the Supreme Soul.)
*
Corbin's take on Angelology, the mystical ideology of the Sufic tradition, is at once complex and totally fascinating. He writes as a scholar and as a mystic, and much of what he writes about relates in many ways to the Siddha Yoga teachings. Thus I want to especially encourage you to visit Part IV of The Angels project : "Text Excerpts from the writings of Henry Corbin & Tom Cheetham".
It has been eleven years since I created the 2014 blog project The Angels, and since then I have never stopped thinking about Angels, my experiences in Vermont, Salem and Maine. I have consciously continued watching my visual world for the appearances of divine Presence in whatever form they want to take in my life, in all the things that surround me daily. It's a practice that is directly aligned with both the Siddha Yoga meditation I practice, and the Sufic traditional teachings that I love reading about in the works of Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham. In this regard, at the end of this project I have added an Epilogue in which I have presented more recent work from two of my Inkjet Print Projects that for me has the subtle divine radiance that otherwise I have enjoyed identifying as Angelic Presence.
Here are the blog links to the seven parts of my 2014 project The Angels:
* * * * *
My Personal Story : The "Fall Upwards"
The angelic function of beings is to make possible the individuation and the incarnation
of each of us. To be able to perceive the iconic face of all creatures, to see their
angelic countenance, requires an opening that simultaneously brings us
closer to the Angel, to other people, and to ourselves. [Corbin
challenges us] to see with eyes of fire, to exercise
the lumen, the gaze of love, in an act of
perception at once human and
angelic that reveals
iconic flesh
as the threshold between the human and the divine.
Tom Cheetham: from his book After Prophesy
Introduction
My personal visionary story takes place in Vermont, near Brattleboro at Jim and Phyllis's house just across the road from a beautiful mountain stream known as Broad Brook.
(Note: Phyllis is my wife's sister; and Jim is a very good friend of mine since our college days (1964-66) together at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY.)
Gloria and I had traveled to Vermont from Canandaigua, NY for a three day family gathering in mid August, 2014. We stopped at the Albany airport on the way to Vermont to pick up our daughter Jessica and our 14 month old grandson, River, who had flown in from Milwaukee, Wi. for the "Baby Fest."
Several families with young children had planned this meeting at Phyllis and Jim's house, so that the young children could spend some time together. Gloria & I, and Jessica & River were staying in Florence's house (Gloria and Phyllis's sister) which is right on the brook directly across from Jim and Phyllis's house.
Vesa (a trained professional massage therapist) and her husband and their young daughter had come for the gathering as well. Jim and Phyllis offered to give Vesa a professional massage table which they no longer needed. Vesa was to take it home with her after the gathering . . . but it was my good fortune that it was available for the message that Vesa was destined to give me during our stay for the "Child-fest." ~ There were several other family members with children who had come for the gathering" (and several dogs as well), but since they do not figure directly into this particular story I will not introduce them here.
About the Visionary Recital
Henry Corbin devoted an entire book -- Avicenna and the Visionary Recital -- to what he says "is not a fiction, and not an objective retelling of some historical fact; rather it's the personal story of a subjective experience, a psychic event which is part of the soul's inward journey of return [ta'wil] to the Orient, its place of Origin, its Celestial Twin, its Guardian or Guiding Angel" . . . that is to say, in in terms of the yoga that I practice: "the return to one's divine Self."
Corbin says the scenes and actions of a recital are in "neither the sensible nor the intelligible worlds, but in the intermediate world," the world of symbols and archetypal images; the Imaginal World "in which spirits are corporealized and bodies spiritualized." Because recitals are personal stories of the soul's own journey, Corbin says they can only be told in the first person.
Corbin says the scenes and actions of a recital are in "neither the sensible nor the intelligible worlds, but in the intermediate world," the world of symbols and archetypal images; the Imaginal World "in which spirits are corporealized and bodies spiritualized." Because recitals are personal stories of the soul's own journey, Corbin says they can only be told in the first person.
Some Additional Context
It's important to mention here that before traveling to Vermont I had begun working on a new photography project that was to become entitled The Angels: Photographs Inspired by the Art of Paul Klee and the Writings of Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham. I got the idea for the project after I re-visited the work of the great Swiss-German artist Paul Klee (1879-1940). I wanted to make a series of photographs in homage to, and inspired by Klee's work; after contemplating for some time how I might do that, I found myself attracted especially to his paintings and drawings of The Angels.
Klee's Angels interested me, I think, especially because of my earlier encounters with the writings of Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham -- which I had read while working on the 2011 project "An Imaginary Book". Much of their writing is about the angel and angelology, but at that time (2011-12) I cringed a little whenever they mentioned the word "angel" and I avoided those parts of their writings in order to get directly to what really interested me at the time, which was Corbin's ideas about the Creative Imagination.
For whatever reasons beyond my interest in Klee's angels, I now felt ready to deal the the angelic realms of Corbin's Iranian Sufism, and so I began to re-visit all the books I had read earlier by Corbin and Cheetham and I particularly sought out those sections which I avoided earlier about the Angels. The more I read, the more I found myself becoming fascinated by Corbin's angelic world. It's similarity to the teachings I had been receiving in my practice of Siddha Yoga also fascinated me, and made me all the more determined to really understand what Corbin was trying to say.
Part IV of The Angels project consists of text excerpts I have taken from the writings of Corbin and Cheetham that relate to my project, and I have included some of the excerpts here in this project as well for the light they shed on the story I am about to tell.
I also invite you to visit my Epilogue for "An Imaginary Book" which consists of a large collection of personal stories - or visionary recitals - I have written about based on real experiences and inspired by Corbin's book Avicenna and the visionary Recital.
* * *
Textual Prelude
to my "Fall Upwards:
from Tom Cheetham's book After Prophecy
from Tom Cheetham's book After Prophecy
When we encounter the mystery and depth of another person, whose Angel are we seeing? In Manichean legend, when, after death, on the Bridge to the other world, the soul meets its Angel in the figure of a beautiful woman, she says, "I am thyself."
The Angel Holy Spirit is, as we know, in each case unique. Henry Corbin's Sufi mystic [Ibn 'Arabi, b.1165] "knows that he is the eye with which God contemplates himself; that he himself, in his being, is the witness by which God witnesses himself, the revelation by which the Hidden Treasure reveals itself to itself."
The person of the Angel is infinite and iconic--that is, the succession of transcendences never stops . . . The true self opens upwards, and forever.
The power of the creative imagination, the gift of Gabriel, the Angel Holy Spirit, enables each of us, if we consent, to give birth to the Angel, whose grace allows us to see all the world as an icon*. For we give birth not only to God, but the world itself, transfigured in the light of a personal vision.
(*Note: see my blog project The Photograph as Icon, part I)
* * *
My Personal Story : "The Fall Upwards"
We had just arrived in Vermont after stoping in Albany to pick up our daughter Jessica and our 14 month old grandson, River, at the airport. Florence had invited us to stay in her house that was immediately next to the beautiful brook named Broad Brook.
We had just arrived in Vermont after stoping in Albany to pick up our daughter Jessica and our 14 month old grandson, River, at the airport. Florence had invited us to stay in her house that was immediately next to the beautiful brook named Broad Brook.
Gloria had asked me to come upstairs to get River and take him downstairs so that she and Jessica could finish unpacking and arrange their room for the three-day visit in Vermont. Gloria handed River to me over the baby-gate at the top of the stairs, and I proceeded down the stairs with River backwards--like we had done several times before at his home in Milwaukee. As we descended, counting off the hardwood steps one-by-one, all of a sudden I stepped into empty space . . .
*
Click on the image to enlarge
I remember landing awkwardly at the bottom of the stairs and then falling over and hitting my head on something very hard. The right side of my head was hurting and bleeding profusely: I soon learned that I had rammed my head into an antique wooden sculpture (imaged below) that Florence had placed at the foot of the stairs.
Though I didn't go unconscious, I was stunned by the impact. Gloria had seen the entire event from above and came running down the stairs after me, terrified, and all the more so when she saw the blood pouring out of my head. Jessica had been downstairs and witnessed the entire event. When I looked up and saw her holding River, Jessica quickly assured me that River was crying because he had been frightened by the fall, but that he was not hurt; I had protected River (14 months old) during the fall by holding him close to me.
Vesa was also downstairs when the accident happened and she went immediately to the refrigerator to look for ice cubes in the freezer. She found or made a cold pack which I was to hold against my head while Gloria's sister Phyllis drove me and Gloria to the Brattleboro Hospital Emergency Room.
I was clearly shaken by the impact to my head, and perhaps from the loss of blood, but the Nurse Practitioner in charge decided I didn't need an MRI. I had a mild concussion, and after an hour or so of observation in the hospital I was sent home with seven stainless steel staples in my head to seal the wound, a large dose of ibuprofen to ease the pain, and orders to get lots of rest and quiet over the next few days.
*
I was exhausted by the time Phyllis had gotten us back to her house. I had something to eat and went straight to bed in our room in Florence's house across the road and next to the brook. I slept in Florence's meditation room, which had screened windows which looked out over the brook. The brook was making a soothing humming sound that helped me relax and fall to sleep. The humming sound reminded me, later, of something Corbin had written - about the sound of Gabriel's wings: in Iranian mysticism there is a tradition that says all the things of the world were brought into existence by the (humming) sound of the Archangel's wings.
(Note: in the yoga I practice the teachings say, similarly, that the sound OM is the origin of our created world.)
I awoke a few hours later and I probably never slept deeply again until the light of dawn began to emerge and I could hear the birds singing above the sound of the humming brook.
Most of the night was spent in something like a gentle rapture, or bliss. I was curled up in bed next to Gloria, listening to the brook, and feeling embraced by a palpable, loving presence. Though I could feel the aches and pains in my head and other parts of my body that had been hurt by the fall, the focus of my attention was on a mysterious, sacred presence I felt surrounding and holding me. I was inside a sacred space, something like a womb perhaps, and I imagined Corbin's angelic beings of light enveloping me, protecting me, healing me. I felt safe, comfortable, cared for, loved . . .
Maybe this experience was due to the concussion, or the sounds of the brook, or the care everyone in our extended family and at the hospital had shown me after I had fallen and cracked my head open. Perhaps my Siddha Yoga Gurus--Baba Muktananda, Bhagavan Nityananda, and Gurmayi--were with me. Henry Cobin might have said that the fall had helped to open my heart which then allowed me entrance into the Intermediate World of the Angels where I encountered my Guardian Angel, or my Celestial Twin, or some psychic aspect of myself . . . "in a form absolutely unique to me." (see quotes #29 & #37)
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On Falling "Upwards"
Corbin writes: "The personal God is . . . encountered at the end of a Quest (as of that for the Holy Grail)." The endpoint of this search is not an idol, not a thing at all, and therefore not an end but a beginning . . . the Emptiness, the Unknown, and the Unknowable into which one falls upward in an unending series of theophanies. (see quote 4)
And, again, Cheetham writes: The person of the Angel is infinite and iconic--that is, the succession of transcendences never stops. . . The true Self opens upwards, and forever. ~ The power of the creative imagination, the gift of Gabriel, the Angel Holy Spirit, enables each of us, if we consent, to give birth to the Angel, whose grace allows us to see all the world as an icon. For we give birth not only to God, but the world itself, transfigured in the light of a personal vision. (see quote 29)
*
I had recently seen a sonogram image of a baby fetus curled up in the mother's womb. It reminded me of the subtle images and feelings I had experienced that night in Vermont as I lay in bed following my fall. Being curled up in a fetal-like position was indeed the most comfortable body position for me at the time. Had the combination of the concussion and my body positioning initiated a psychic regression back to my time in the womb? ~ I could theorize and guess many things, but my experience throughout that night yielded a palpable kind of inner knowing that I was safe, protected and loved; that I was being cared for and enveloped by a deep and profound, sacred, healing presence.
*
The next day I was feeling very tired, achey and spacey. My entire being felt discombobulated. There were lots of little children playing together, screaming, having fun, crying; dogs were barking; the adults were talking . . . and I just wanted to hide away and be quiet. Vesa could see this and offered to do a CranioSacral treatment with me. At first I was shy about the idea of receiving a massage from my niece, but after she briefly explained the process she used, I finally agreed to accept her loving offer. After all, here I was in Vermont, in my sister and brother-in-law's house, with seven staples in my scalp, a concussion, a loving offer by a professional massage therapist, and a professional massage table to boot! What synchronistically good fortune!!
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As I lay on the table (which was set up in Jim and Phyllis's bedroom), Vesa was touching me very lightly in various places associated with my aches and pains, and along my central nervous system-–the membranes and fluid that surround, protect and nourish the brain and spinal cord. As she worked I could feel energy being moved in my body. At one point I even felt some of the staples in my head vibrating.
Vesa asked me to focus on my breathing. As she passed her hands lightly over and under me I could feel my body go into a deep mode of relaxation, something like a very conscious meditative state.
(Note: I remember I was able to place my head face-down into an opening in the message table Jim and Phyllis had given Vesa, which allowed me to breath in a more relaxed way. I remember I was so relaxed I could not control the drool pouring out of my mouth onto the bedroom rug below.)
At some point near the end of the process Vesa very gently and slowly picked up my arm and carefully bent it at the elbow; then very deliberately she moved my arm up and away from the side of my body. This upward movement initiated a remarkable, unforgettable psychic event which Corbin would call a "rupture" or opening into the Imaginal World.
As she carefully, gently lifted my arm ever so slowly upwards I could feel a huge space inside my being open . . . wider and wider. The vastness of the space was filled with a strange luminous darkness, a living presence, a sacred fullness of being. Then, spontaneously my arm began transmuting into a bird's . . . an angel's wing. My entire being continued to open, ever wider and wider, into a vastness of space unsayable . . . unimaginable.
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In Corbin's study of visionary recitals he writes about the great Sufi named Suhrawardi (b. 1191) who speaks of the need for the mystic traveler to pass beyond the cosmos and reach the archangelic pleroma which he calls "Nonwhere" -- the pure spiritual space beyond the "Ninth Sphere." (see quote 57)
In retrospect, I would have to say that sounds very much like what I experienced; but there is another way to speak of such mysterious things: that is to say, I had entered into the space of the heart, which the Sufis and Hindu Yogis say holds within it the entire universe--all of God's Creation. Indeed, the space of the heart is the infinite space in which God and one's own Self are experienced as inseparably united, One.
At the heart of existence, there is a dark unfathomable union of our own innermost substance with the elemental forces of nature. Earth, air, fire, and water are powerful symbols of our deepest being.
Tom Cheetham: After Prophecy
[To avoid] a fall into nihilism . . . the-will-to-power . . . requires a profound humility and the ability to open to the influence of the Angel who alone can provide the balance that keeps the world in harmony. . . The image of the Angel Holy Spirit completes and perfects the human soul with the form of the Celestial Twin and keeps the world from being thrown out of balance. It is knowledge of the heart that holds the worlds together. Tom Cheetham: All the World An Icon
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A few weeks after I experienced this amazing "opening of the heart" I came across the following related passages in two of Corbin's books that speak of infinite space in relation to the experience of the Archangel of Revelations. The text sheds (for me) "angelic light" on the very important symmetrical photograph which I had made spontaneously shortly after we came home from our journey. (The source image for the symmetrical construction was from my Meadow series.)
Corbin wrote:
Gabriel, the Angel of the Annunciation and the Revelations, is the Angel of the theophanies that were given to the Prophet Mohammed. The Koran verses (53:3-4 & 81:18-29) preserve the memory of the first grandiose visions when the Prophet, emerging from his tent, contemplated the majesty of the Angel whose outspread wings covered the whole horizon. (see the entire quote #54 from Corbin's book The man of Light)
This is why the pre-eminence of the color green, heralding [for the Sufis] the highest mystical station, is supported by an allusion to the rafraf, the green drapery seen by the Prophet, covering the horizon of the Heavens at the moment of his first vision of the Angel. (see quote #53 from Corbin's Book: Cyclic Time )
Image #1 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT (the image also exists as an 18x18" inkjet print)
Symmetrical Photograph with Birds (four sets) in "V" Formation flying in the clouds over the meadow behind our house
(This image also exists an an 18x18" Inkjet Print)
I made this image after coming home from our trip to Salem and Arcadia. It is
(for me) a powerful visual metaphor for what I experienced during Vesa's
healing session with me in Vermont a few weeks before our trip to Maine.
As Vesa consciously lifted my arm ever so slowly upwards I could feel a huge space inside my being
open wider and wider. The vastness of the space was filled with a dark light, a living presence,
a sacred fullness of being. Then, spontaneously my arm began transmuting
into a bird's . . . or angel's wing. My entire being continued to open, ever wider
and wider, into a vastness of space unsayable . . . unimaginable.
Note: if you click on this image (twice) to enlarge it for a closer view you will
better see the four "V" Bird Formations in the sky.
* * *
That visionary experience (of an infinite space pervaded by Angelic Presence) filled my entire being with gratitude. And, in this regard, I want to share with you, as a way of creating closure for this part of my project, the words of my beloved guru, Gurumayi, from her book Enthusiasm. Her words actually invoke in me the remembrance of both the experience I had during the healing session and the symmetrical image (presented above) which is directly associated with that experience.
Gurumayi writes:
It is natural to express gratitude, and people constantly say to one another, "Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much." "Thanks a million." "From the bottom of my heart, thank you." Gracias." "Merci." Nonetheless, the true experience of gratitude is profound. It is infinite. You cannot even see the horizon of gratitude. It spreads across the sky through eternity.
Remembrance is what allows you to experience gratitude all the time. When you begin to forget the gentle hand of God and the many great services people have performed for you, it is not just a passive oversight. In some quiet, invisible way, forgetfulness is causing you to dig your own grave. Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
Remembrance is what allows you to experience gratitude all the time. When you begin to forget the gentle hand of God and the many great services people have performed for you, it is not just a passive oversight. In some quiet, invisible way, forgetfulness is causing you to dig your own grave. Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
* * * *
Some Photographs I made in Vermont
after my "Fall Backwards"
I made the following photographs (and many others) in Vermont as an
experiment--following the visionary experience I wrote about--to see
how that experience--and walking around with a concussion--
might influence what I saw and how I photographed.
(Note: If using a desktop of laptop computer to view my
blog published photographs, please visit this link:
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Image #2 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
Angelic Presence in the Shadows & Light patterns falling on Broad Brook Road
Image #3 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
Angelic Presence in a Broad Brook Waterfalls
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Image #4 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
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A Leaning Trellis & An illuminated space behind Florence's house
Image #5 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
A red flower box with hanging plants, Florence's house
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Image #6 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
An Angel Inside a Leaf in the Woods (Homage to Paul Klee & Charles Birchfield)
This four-fold symmetrical construction was created in response to Klee's Angel
imagery for my project The Angles. The source image was a photograph
of a leaf I had made for my project In the Woods
Angel of the Face
Henry Corbin finds the necessity of a rupture--a rupture caused by an encounter with . . . the face of the Angel. [Corbin writes:] "The lofty constructions of conscious thought become blurred in the rays not of a twilight but rather of a dawn, from which figures always foreboded, awaited, and loved rise into view."
The figures of which he speaks are the figures of the Angels--the Heavenly Twin. . . To meet the Angel of the Face is to encounter transcendence personified and to be transformed by the experience.
The meeting with the Angel is a release, an opening towards a life in sympathy with the world and its inhabitants. It is an initiation into a form of life dedicated to the transmutation of idols into icons.
The Angel summons us to our true self, which is not an object, not an ego, not any kind of thing, but an opening and a process of continual undoing. Tom Cheetham, After Prophesy Part IV
The photographs I made in Vermont were an experiment or "test" to see if I could make visible, as Paul Klee would say, "the invisible", and Corbin's imaginal world of the angels. In the months that followed my fall and the angelic encounters I had experienced after my "Fall", the feeling of Angelic presence became very strong in nearly everything I was seeing; it was a grace-filled time; the Face of the Angel was constantly before me.
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Our Visit in Salem, Mass.
__________________________________________________
The side of an old dilapidated building near the Old Burial Ground in Salem.
The spooky disorienting display of light and shadows attracted me from a distance.
I fine this image easier to see when it is presented small in scale.
Do you see the screaming mouth and two eye in the upper corners?
This photograph and the ones that follow, continue the Vermont experiment: could I sustain the magical state of mind in which I had photographed immediately after my Vermont "Fall?" Could I make photographs in Salem, then in Maine and finally back home, in NY State, or any other place, that gives visual form to my "angelophanies" (images radiant with Angelic Presence)?
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When, in the summer of 2014, my wife Gloria and I decided to take a road trip up to Acadia National Park, in Maine, in late September when the trees would be in full color, she also insisted that we stop along the way for a brief visit in Salem, Mass. Of course Salem is world famous for its history of witches, various kinds of witchcraft, and in particular the Salem Witch Trials (and then the hangings an burnings) of 1692. After my experiences in Vermont a few weeks before our planned trip, I became more enthusiastic about our planned stopover in Salem. I decided we must stay in Salem's famous Hawthorne Hotel, which is in the heart of the historic area of the town . . . and which claims to be haunted by ghosts!
We arrived in Salem in the late afternoon, September 22, 2014. We checked into the Hotel, and since we had a few hours before we were to meet up with our tour group and guide for an evening walk throughout Salem's Historic Area, we decided to go for a walk on our own.
There was an old, probably abandoned (and possibly haunted) house next to the Old Burial Grounds which is just behind the famous Salem Witch Trials Memorial Park. When I took the image (Image #7 above) in the late afternoon light I saw a fascinating and somehow frightening display of light skimming the side of the old dilapidated building.
(Later, after I had gotten home and processed the image, I noticed a FACE in the shadowy forms: two eyes are in the upper corners of the picture; and what appears to be a mouth, wide open--as if emitting a scream--which can be seen in the lower half of the image. This "Face of the Angel" is more visible when the image is viewed reduced in size.)
We then continued our walk into the Old Burial Grounds as the light was rapidly fading. And yet there remained a few last sharp, angular streaks of yellow-turning-red light falling across a few of the old, decaying, textured gravestone surfaces--the kind of warm autumnal light that transformed the stones into living presences while everything else was sinking into dark brooding shadows and the temperatures rapidly cooling on this late September evening.
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Image #8 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
Surface of a Gravestone in the Old Burial Ground in Historic Salem
As we entered the Old Burial Grounds we experienced a distinct change in atmosphere; an unexpected wind that felt strangely aggressive seemed to make the entire place feel uncomfortably cold and creepy. I took a picture of an old decaying gravestone (above, which also seems to have a face) then we quickly moved on to the nearby Salem Witch Trials Memorial Park.
Walking in the Memorial was a bit intimidating in the failing light. We found ourselves pretty much alone surrounded by 20 named and dated memorial stones dedicated to each of the people who were wrongly accused of witchcraft and violently executed after the famed Salem Trials of 1692.
As we were slowly passing the 20 markers, one by one, reading the names and dates on the stones, Gloria noticed that the date on several of the memorials was September 22, 1692. We had unknowingly come to visit the Memorial on the anniversary date when eight of the 20 accused victims had been hung.
September 22, 1692
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Standing in the shadows, in the far corner of the Memorial, there appeared to be an old bearded man who looked like he belonged to another era, perhaps a fisherman who had dressed to honor the memorialized dead on this particular auspicious date. His presence was strangely faint in the windy twilight; he looked lonely, but he clearly wasn't there asking for handouts. He remained secluded almost invisible in the failing light and shadows; Indeed, I became a little frightened . . . and wondered . . . if he were really there . . . if, perhaps, I were seeing a ghost?
When we moved closer toward him, as we looked at each of the memorial stones, I couldn't summon up the courage to look up at him in the eye. I didn't want to attract his attention, and I certainly didn't want to have to deal with some spooky inexplicable visionary phenomenon!
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We learned later that most of the 20 people memorialized in the park had been women accused of being witches. All but one of the 20 were hung on Gallows Hill. The exception was a man, named Giles Corey; he was slowly pressed to death under a door plank. His executioners placed heavy rocks, a few at a time, on the plank, over a three day period, until Corey finally expired.
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Image #9 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT A spooky illuminated building we passed on our night tour of Historic Salem During our guided evening tour walking through Salem's Historic Area of town, we were told several reportedly true stories, some hauntingly horrifying, and some funny. The stories had their intended impact on me: I soon began to notice that everything I saw in the dark evening light seemed spooky in some way or another to me. Take for example, the image above of an old building that was undergoing something like a new "face-lift."
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When our guide learned we were staying in the Hawthorne Hotel she told our group some stories of hauntings that took place in the hotel.
Image #10 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
Hallway Lamp and wood cabinet across from the 3rd floor Elevator stop, the Hawthorn Hotel
The last photograph I took in Salem before moving on to Acadia National Park in Maine.
One story had to do with a ghost who repeatedly would flush the toilet and run water from the bathroom faucet late at night. . . in the same one room. Our guide told us she swore she would never again tell visitors staying at the hotel which floor and room that story had taken place in. But of course we coaxed her a little, and she finally broke down and told us the haunted room was on the third floor. We were staying in room #310!! She tried to assure us that the haunting was in a different room on the third floor than ours, but she did it in a playful way that left us wondering . . .
The tour's final stop was the Witch Trials Memorial Park, which Gloria and I had visited a few hours earlier. Thankfully, the cold winds had died down by then. Our guide very touchingly honored the 20 victims who had died senselessly in 1692, and particularly the eight who had died on the anniversary date, September 22. Except for our small tour group, the little park was dark and empty: the old man with the beard we had seen earlier was nowhere to be seen.
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That night, in the early morning hours, in our 3rd floor room in the Hawthorn Hotel, when Gloria got up to go to the bathroom late in the night she found the faucet running . . . slowly, but nonetheless it was running. She woke me and whispered in a frightened voice: "Had I been playing a trick on her?" "No!" I hadn't. "I would never waste water that way--not intentionally, at least."
The last photograph I took in Salem.
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In the morning we continued our trip up to Main's wonderful Acadia National Park, but just before we left the hotel I took my last photograph in Salem: the Hall Lamp across from our the 3rd floor elevator door. Later, as I was working on the earlier version of this blog project, I noticed that the dark, decorative arching form of the cabinet, which partially hides the lamp, echoes the forms of several photographs I had taken in late afternoon light of the day before.
OK, I find that interesting, but I'll let you come to you own conclusions about what that might mean. All four of the images I have presented above, share at least one thing (for me): an Angelic Presence pervades the entire picture space.
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Photographs I made in Maine
(near or in) Acadia National Park
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Image #11 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
Arcadia Pines Motel: our window view of the swimming pool area
(This image also exists as an 18x18" Inkjet Print)
This strange, quirky photograph has Angelic Presence and, at the same time,
the kind of humor one see's in some of Paul Klee's Angel Drawings.
I took the photograph through our Motel's back-room window.
The Motel was just down the road from the main
entrance to Acadia National Park.
Image #12 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
Plastic covered outside eating area, the Two Cats Cafe, in Bar Harbor, Maine
Image #13 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
Two Angles of Light, photographed at the Jordan Pond Outdoor Cafe in Acadia National Park
Image #14 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
Symmetrical Photograph of a tree just off the "Ocean Walking Path" in Acadia National Park
Image #15 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
I made this photograph inside a teepee made by indigenous people from the area
for am educational display inside the Acadia National Park.
Please be sure to click on this image twice to enlarge it. The light and textures
are palpable, and pervaded by Angelic Presence (at least for me).
Image #16 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
Symmetrical Photograph, constructed with an image of a tide pool on Schoodic Point, Acadia
(Two stones & their shadows in a tide pool)
This image exists as a 21x21" inkjet print
Image #17 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
Symmetrical Photograph (constructed with an image of a tide pool & stones
on the shores of Schoodic Point, Acadia National Park
This is one of the oddest symmetrical images I have ever made.
I have no idea what its about, though I keep seeing an ornate
gold goblet, with eyes. The blue shapes are the angel's
wings. Wings are central to my involvement with
the magic and stories that pervade Angels, and
their symmetry is a key to both a bird's wings
and its eyes.
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Pictures with Angelic Presence I made in or
behind our house in Canandaigua, NY
after returning from our trip
to Vermont, Salem & Maine
Image #1 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT (the image exists as an 18x18" inkjet print)
Symmetrical Photograph, constructed with a Meadow Image with a V formation of birds flying in the clouds
This is a fourfold symmetrical photograph constructed with a single photograph of the meadow behind our house
repeated four times and conjoined into one image. If you enlarge this image for a closer view you will better see
the four Bird Formations (V) in the sky. The image has a very strong Angelic Presence for me that relates to
my remembrance of the visionary encounter with the Angel's wing I experienced during the
CranialSacral therapy session I received in Vermont, in August, from Vesa.
As Vesa consciously lifted my arm ever so slowly upwards I could feel a huge space inside my being
open wider and wider. The vastness of the space was filled with a dark light, a living presence,
a sacred fullness of being. Then, spontaneously my arm began transmuting
into a bird's . . . or angel's wing. My entire being continued to open, ever wider
and wider, into a vastness of space unsayable . . . unimaginable.
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Image #18 Angelic Presence: a 12x12 Inkjet Print PROJECT
Our Cloths dryer, door open, with light rays on the wall
and reflections of light in the door's window.
Image #19 Angelic Presence: 12x12" Inkjet Print PROJECT
Reflection of a lamp in a picture frame's glass, made in our house in Canandaigua after our return from our trip.
An additional collection of images
from my Inkjet Print Project
which (for me) are pervaded by "Angelic Presence"
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Images that invoke in me a feeling of Angelic Presence are images radiant with grace: images which are illuminated with the mystery of the divine. In other words, they are images that function for me as True, living Symbols, or what I often refer to as Symbolic Photographs.
Symbolic photographs are not images that"symbolize something else," but rather they are images that are the embodiment of Truth, that ultimate ineffable mystery: The Oneness of Being; the Origin of Angels: The divine Self which dwells in every human Heart.
Henry Corbin writes:
What sees and what is seen are the divine Being himself. ~ This is the final end toward which all mystic ways converge; . . . the mirror of the inner eye, the eye of the heart, is none other than the gaze of the Witness: "I am the mirror of thy face; through thine own eyes I look upon they countenance." ~ The Contemplated is the Contemplator and vice versa.
Henry Corbin from his book Man of Light
(visit my blog page: Contemplating Symbolic Photographs)
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The Photographs below were selected
from the following two Projects:
&
Night Reflections (with two blue eyes) in our living room window
MAKOM "Place" 18x18 Image (on 20x24"base) #168
"Covid Specter with tears on our picture window"
21x21" Square Image #9 (Bird/Angel/Symmetrical Photograph)
The Bird of Tears (from my project The Bird, The Angel of Tears)
18x18 Symmetrical Image (on 20x24"base) #54
Symmetrical Photograph, Four Broad Brook Stone "Wings"
18x18 (& 21x21") Symmetrical Image "Dissolution"
(from my project "Creation-Dissolution of a World")
18x18 Symmetrical Image (on 20x24"base) #17 Symmetrical Photo (Angelic Music Instrument)
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Blue Angel of the Window from my project Blue Angels
18x18" Image (on 20x24"base) #218 (Ghosts, Angels, Maya's Veils, Faint Photos)
Masked Ghost walking the streets of Atlanta from the Atlanta City Series.
(click here. to see the blog project & two other
related multiple-exposure projects 1974-77 )
18x18" Image (on 20x24"base) #59 (Ghosts, Angels, Maya's Veils, Faint Photos)
"The ghost in the corner" a moonlit photograph from the project Nocturne
MAKOM "Place" 18x18 Image (on 20x24"base) #60
Tree Shadows in a Yellow-Green River
Pandemic Inspired Photo 18x18" Image (on 20x24"base) #65
Pandemic Project: Basement light on Stored Screens
Pandemic Inspired Photo 18x18" Image (on 20x24"base)) #84
Pandemic Still life : Ghost Ship
MAKOM "Place" 18x18 Image (on 20x24"base) #51
The Hudson River, Early Morning, looking South from Storm King Mountain
Winter 18x18 Image (on 20x24"base) #18 Symmetrical Photograph
(Luminous Blue Snow Angel)
Image #126 (Face) 18x18" Inkjet Print (on 20x24"base)
Face of light (In remembrance of Larry McPherson, who died of Parkinson's disease, 2025)
21x21" Square Image Part 2: #61 (Face) Dark Divided Head (O.F.) (Rome Colosseum)
Quirky 18x18 Square Prints (on 20x24"base) #124
Lake Photograph printed from a light-fogged negative
21x21" Image #75 (Insect) (Symmetrical Photograph)
Illuminated Garden Path (Butterfly of light)
Many of the symmetrical photographs manifest
wings and eyes spontaneously.
Inversed symmetrical snow angel wings
21x21" Symmetrical Image #16 (Ghosts, Angels, Maya's Veils, Faint Photos)
(Blue Angel - Blue Pearl)
Image #11 Infinity : 12x12" Symmetrical Photographs with Infinite Patterns of Space & Light
This Symmetrical Photograph was constructed from a photograph I made in
Image #16 Infinity : 12x12" Symmetrical Photographs with Infinite Patterns of Space & Light
"Khidr"
(The following poem, by Rumi, mentions Khidr)
One night a man was crying Allah. Allah.
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said, So. I have heard you calling out,
but have you ever gotten any response?
The man hand no answer for that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep
where he dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick green foliage.
Why did you stop praising? Because
I've never heard anything back.
This longing you express
is the return message.
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your life to be one of them.
(translated by Coleman Barks from his book A Year With Rumi)
To learn more about Khidr visit the Afterword in my project:
Also, I recommend Tom Cheetham's book: Green Man, Earth Angel
Image #25 Infinity : 12x12" Symmetrical Photographs with Infinite Patterns of Space & Light
from my project I Was So Happy To See My Friend's Face
Image #31 Infinity : 12x12" Symmetrical Photographs with Infinite Patterns of Space & Light
Broad Brook Stones (with two blue heart stones)
Part III : 18x18 (on 20x24"base) The Meadow #58 (Symmetrical photograph)
North meadow & Pond with two layers of early morning fog and hanging leaves at the center.
(Golden Apparition in the Vermont Woods Over Broad Brook)
Be sure to enlarge images to get a better sharper look at the subtle details
(Blue Nocturnal Subterranean Angel)
(Broad Brook Angel)
(Silent Dialogue over the North Meadow & Pond)
21x21" Square Image Part 2: #67 Symmetrical Photograph
(The Witnessing Eye)
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Quirky / Faint 18x18 Inkjet Prints (on 20x24"base) #18-273
Three figures waving "Good Bye" (to a Luminous Angel)
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This 12x12" Inkjet Print Project was published and
announced on my blog's Welcome Page on September 2, 2025
Related Project Links:
The 2014 Blog Project Links for The Angels
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.
