The hand with heart holds more
I was wandering,
looking down old alleys,
plazas and ancient streets.
And I spied an old friend.
The Hamsa.
خمسة | חַמְסָה
The Five.
I used to wear one of these in college, during another phase of talismanic connection. I lost it surfing. And then it came back to me. I lost it again in rough sea.
And it came back to me.
And then I gave it away.
A gift of five.
It’s been suggested that the hamsa, the Semitic wording for five, would be the protector at the door. The hand protects. My traveling companion then, as now, Dawn A. Clark wrote a piece on her collective study of these doorway protectors.
The hamsa is profoundly ancient —
the reaching hand,
a protector against evil.
In Mesopotamia, the hand was known, an amulet to Inanna —
her name,
,
6,000
years back.
The tradition continues to this day.
In Girvin’s rare collection of talismans,
there is a selection of these protective devices that has
been installed in a series of framed entrance touch points —
strung on an opening wall — an entry protection to all that come to Girvin’s offices. I bought them in Africa, France, London, Hong Kong in old dealer’s shops in gatherings from the Middle East and other places — where talismans are real — over time.
Who remembers?
Who has forgotten?
Usually they are marked with phrases
in Hebrew and Arabic.
The hand holds more.
To the symbolism of the hand,
some would know of
my work in orchestrating a set of drawings on the hand —
the mūdrā.
These are,
in various traditions —
gestures, teachings, secrets —
and otherwise, that spellbind
the wisdom of thousands of years of knowing.
I drew many of them, contained
in a book of watercolors.
Two
from
Mūdrā.
For me, the hand is about making.
And from the heart
goes the hand
and
goes the heart.
For me, the hamsa is making — it’s a magical protector — but too, it’s
the former, the molder, the designer of things that come from the heart, whence the mind and memory builds. The hand articulates the visioning, like drawing it out, drawn on, drawn in, drawn out.
Draw it, one way or another.
But draw it.
Tim | Queen Anne Studios
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