Red-Handed With Shechinah

י'ו בחשון תשס"ח

I've uncovered another interesting tidbit related to my "chance" purchase of some red ochre, my "chance" encounter with a deer which followed that purchase, and my "chance" discovery following both of those that links both red ochre and deer symbolism to Shechinah.

As the deer symbol is kabbalistically associated with Shechinah, red ochre is historically and more practically associated with Shechinah. Specifically, red ochre symbolizes the immersive creative explosion characteristic of the hashra'ah of Shechinah.

Kathleen Kimball writes in Red Handed: An Inquiry Into The Meaning Of Prehistoric Red Ochre:

Perhaps our ancestors painted or tattooed hand prints on their bodies. Tattooing and painting red ochre hands on human skin likely went on for many tens of thousands of years before so called ‘creative explosion’ 35,000 or so years ago.

This ‘creative revolution’ was an intensified interest in permanence generally and in the human hand specifically. This is when our species outlines objects on stone surfaces. This outlining seems to me to be a kind of making permanent or ‘binding’.

Taking all this together, it may be that another historic bestowal of hashra'ah and creative explosion is in the making ... information all linked together and brought down through the intended purchase of a 15-watt lightbulb for the elegantly witchy little desk lamp which stands beside my computer. יה