We invoke you with offerings, Ganesha, making offerings to you as Love Invoking you with offerings, He of Plentitudes We invoke you with offerings, Ganesha, making offerings to the Sage great and wise Invoking you with offerings, He of Rulers Come to us quickly and join our gathering, be among us!
Ganesha meditation mantras are embracing and enduring as ambient catalysts. They fill us with a sense of piety and peace. This work exemplifies that fervour and feeling as one views the monochromatic tones of the Ganesha against the velvet colours of a night sky as if rising from a smoking sunset.
Philosophically however, Ganesha’s elephant head denotes the capacity we have on the spiritual journey to leave the mundane world and enter the world of unseen mysteries. In the Mudgala Puranam, one of Ganesha’s two most sacred texts, his eight incarnations help devotees realise that All is One. The head represents transcendent reality (some say it represents that which is outside of the self while others say it represents Atman) his body represents tangible reality, the temporal sense of self and the two co-joined create all that exists in Truth.
Ganesha experiences life in the mundane world up close and personal, cosmic yet visceral. Therefore, only he understands our troubles and obstacles. In this way, with his head disconnected from the ever-shifting material world yet with intimate understanding of our difficulties, he can best discern the ‘way out’ and help guide us further on our journey. This invocation is testimony to what is ethereal and auratic in the journey of a devotee.
ASLAM SHAIKH
Ethereal Invocation
Acrylic on Canvas
38 x 60 inches
2018