from sigil to studio:
the calling
of an island
from sigil to studio:
the calling of an island
“No place that has a spiritual history can be revealed to those who know nothing of it by facts and descriptions.”
- Fiona MacCleod in ‘Iona’
My story begins with a promise. It begins at the edge of the water.
Have you ever written anything at the shoreline? At the liminal space where the angels play, where heavy earth and rooted rock meet the crust and salt of the churning deep, and the foam pulls back to reveal the bejeweled kaleidoscope of will, blessing and invitation?
We live in a world where we have to ask.
They tell us that the moon does that to the waters.
I don’t think so.
I grew up under a blue spruce tree. It had cicada shells clinging to its bark, stories shed amidst the sap and spider webs. It was a place where I didn’t have to speak. I didn’t need to speak. It was a refuge, an island, an entrance. They cut it down years ago, but I still know where to find it. It was the first place I found at the edge of the water.
I left home to study art in a city whose icon was a bell with a single crack. People would line up around the block to see this bell, which always fascinated me. It was a failed attempt to recast a tool of healing from times past, a naive attempt to reframe, redirect and bind that which could not be bound.
The historians wrote that there was something wrong with the composition of the metals. But I’ve felt that royal resonance and I know you can’t silence the resounding cry of revolution. You can’t take that which hasn’t been given to you. These songs in the night, this palace of peace, loud and silent, was the second place I found at the edge of the water.
The years that followed were spent driving back and forth across the country, teaching art, cooking over fires and sleeping in canyons with secret springs and hidden parables. The signs would describe millennia void of wonders and a slow march towards “progress”, but the unwinding trails and the echo of eternity would teach me something different - something greater and eternal.
Then, in New York, the city spread across the garnet grid, I learned how to kindle fire in my belly, and that the luminaries in my fingertips would not beckon but bow to the holy breath. I met others who also knew this, and then they took me to The Isle. The Isle at the edge of the waters. The Isle that changed everything.
The Isle of Iona - a mountaintop turned miracle, the return of the doves, a majestic throne upon which a lineage took root to release a tidal wave of treasures into time past, time present and time to come. It’s the pulling of the water you see - the out-pouring of the divine forges, the crowning of kings and the burying of the past. It’s the parting of the mist. It’s the (re)emergence of the shoreline.
At dusk, on a boat, in the wonder of it all - the weather that comes only with prayer, the faces at the edges of maps, the ferns in the cathedral rafters and the green marble tumbled in the songs sung at sea - I made a mark. A sigil, of eternal origin, a promise shimmering in the shifting sands, to recast the net and catch that which all can forever feast upon. For the time of war is over, and the time of love has begun.
See you at the edge of the water,
Tiffany
“No place that has a spiritual history can be revealed to those who know nothing of it by facts and descriptions.”
- Fiona MacCleod in ‘Iona’
My story begins with a promise. It begins at the edge of the water.
Have you ever written anything at the shoreline? At the liminal space where the angels play, where heavy earth and rooted rock meet the crust and salt of the churning deep, and the foam pulls back to reveal the bejeweled kaleidoscope of will, blessing and invitation?
We live in a world where we have to ask.
They tell us that the moon does that to the waters.
I don’t think so.
I grew up under a blue spruce tree. It had cicada shells clinging to its bark, stories shed amidst the sap and spider webs. It was a place where I didn’t have to speak. I didn’t need to speak. It was a refuge, an island, an entrance. They cut it down years ago, but I still know where to find it. It was the first place I found at the edge of the water.
I left home to study art in a city whose icon was a bell with a single crack. People would line up around the block to see this bell, which always fascinated me. It was a failed attempt to recast a tool of healing from times past, a naive attempt to reframe, redirect and bind that which could not be bound.
The historians wrote that there was something wrong with the composition of the metals. But I’ve felt that royal resonance and I know you can’t silence the resounding cry of revolution. You can’t take that which hasn’t been given to you. These songs in the night, this palace of peace, loud and silent, was the second place I found at the edge of the water.
The years that followed were spent driving back and forth across the country, teaching art, cooking over fires and sleeping in canyons with secret springs and hidden parables. The signs would describe millennia void of wonders and a slow march towards “progress”, but the unwinding trails and the echo of eternity would teach me something different - something greater and eternal.
Then, in New York, the city spread across the garnet grid, I learned how to kindle fire in my belly, and that the luminaries in my fingertips would not beckon but bow to the holy breath. I met others who also knew this, and then they took me to The Isle. The Isle at the edge of the waters. The Isle that changed everything.
The Isle of Iona - a mountaintop turned miracle, the return of the doves, a majestic throne upon which a lineage took root to release a tidal wave of treasures into time past, time present and time to come. It’s the pulling of the water you see - the out-pouring of the divine forges, the crowning of kings and the burying of the past. It’s the parting of the mist. It’s the (re)emergence of the shoreline.
At dusk, on a boat, in the wonder of it all - the weather that comes only with prayer, the faces at the edges of maps, the ferns in the cathedral rafters and the green marble tumbled in the songs sung at sea - I made a mark. A sigil, of eternal origin, a promise shimmering in the shifting sands, to recast the net and catch that which all can forever feast upon. For the time of war is over, and the time of love has begun.
See you at the edge of the water,
Tiffany
get to know me on instagram • @iona.vision
get to know me on instagram • @iona.vision