April 2025 - Internal & External Light
Turbulence - Painting with Light - Beltane - Candlemancy - Earth Practice
It has been a quiet month of work here in Olympia, Washington. The winter glooms have been chased away by the emboldened sun, but my nose has been to the grindstone drawing page after page of The Mushroom Knight Volume 3. Nonetheless, I’ve been enjoying the blooming flowers and birdsong while walking the dog.
Looking outwards, however, it seems American life is in turbulence. And from what I’ve heard on the horn, the bumps and bumbles are making waves around the world. As per usual, the troubling aspects of our shared humanity are dominating the headlines. And it is easy for those headlines to make lines on our heads! I myself have two severe, grumbly lines right between my eyes that frowned themselves into existence over a lifetime of observing utter nonsense, and expressing my face accordingly. Luckily, I have also been blessed with two deep lines around my mouth from laughing in spite of it all.
If you are feeling a bit wrinkled this spring, you are not alone. War is warring, tech is teching, wealth is polarizing. Move backstage within this theater of the absurd and you will find the poor, the lonely, the marginalized, and the dispossessed continuing to foot the bill for these great failures of human humanity. Is this the best we can do? Most certainly, it is not.
We are an ingenious species of created creators. Human beings are my favorite animal. By far. There is no contest. And we have the gifts and resources at our disposal to solve our problems. The calamity of the day is not a matter of having too little of anything. We have enough food, resources, science, and bodies. Scarcity isn’t the issue. It is trickier than that.
The external world of civilization that we have built over the past ~50,000-60,000 years of culture creation has its genesis in the mass consensus of internal worlds from within each human on this planet, often given unconsciously, with the most wealthy and powerful amongst us weighting these realizations towards their biases. That’s all to say: the external world as we see it on our phones, TVs, and newspapers, is just a byproduct of our internal worlds. It always has been. Much of our communal attention is pointed towards the external. But the internal is the womb, the progenitor. If the external is unhealthy, it is because the internal is unwell as well.
So if we feel lost and confused at what we see from our apartment window, we may want to shine a light inward and search for some clues.
Over the next few months I’ll be dedicating The Small Blue Mailbox to the phenomenon of LIGHT. I’ll offer up little essays on LIGHT through the lenses of nature, magic, and my own artistic process.
We will think of LIGHT in at least two primary ways. There is the external light; the Sun’s radiation, the Earth’s lightning, our own humming electricity. Then there is the light internal—a kind of light that we can access during times of tumult, to make sense of the nonsense, to chart a path when things get slippery. The light of self-discovery that reminds us there is always beauty, even amongst the baleful.
As always—it goes on,
Oliver Bly
Calendar:
The Mushroom Knight - A Graphic Novel Series
Available Now!
July 24th - 27th - San Diego Comic Con - Artist Alley , Schedule TBA
August 29th - 30th - Boise Comic Arts Festival - Schedule TBA
A question I am asked often at conventions is: “do you work traditionally or digitally?”
Because I fancy being difficult, I usually reply: “yes!”
Creating art on a computer machine is not new. Nor is the bias against it. Both audiences and artists alike can have some snobbery towards the digital in favor of the analogue, and I get it. Whenever culture leaps forward, the fashionable avant-garde looks backward. When MP3’s and streaming became the bog standard, vinyl made a comeback.
What is earthen, though, will always be particularly pleasant. Our bodies are of the earth, and there is something distinctly satisfying about keeping it real in this way. The more time we spend on devices, the more hungry we are for the tangible. For paint underneath our fingernails. And I feel this way, too.
However, in this instance, I have traded in my brushes and pens for a plastic stylus and a suite of programs. And not being above a bit of snobbery myself, I like to offer up a bit of a snooty wink and proclaim “I do not work digitally! I paint with LIGHT!”
My main canvas is my CINTIQ 22HD, which is about thirteen years old, and chugging along nicely. It is on this screen that I have drawn each and every page of The Mushroom Knight. When I meet it in the morning, it is a big black canvas. Then I say “let there be light”, click a button, and off I go into a field of sublime luminescence.
I use Photoshop for just about everything. For pencils, I use a free brush called Stumpy Pencil. For inks, I use a brush of my own recipe that mimics a technical pen. And when I need some texture, I use one of my purchased brush selections from Kyle T. Webster. And that’s about it.
Next month I will expound a bit more on color theory and how painting with light differs from painting with pigment. But for now, enjoy this preview page from TMK Volume 3, freshly lettered by AndWorld Designs, depicting the Haskasha’da… a ceremony of light.
It is appropriate to begin this exploration of LIGHT today, for today is the first of Bealtaine, which is what they call May in the land of Ireland, where my father was born, where I hold duel citizenship, and where my paternal bloodline resides to this day. It is also the name of the ancient May Day festival, often anglicized to Beltane, which is celebrated by many around the world in modernity—particularly those immersed in the cultures we colloquially gather under the catch-all umbrella of “Celtic”. Our great contemporary word detectives have deduced that Beltane may mean: bright fire, bale-fire, or perhaps even Bel-fire, after the Celtic god of healing, Belenos. It is a light-centric holiday, celebrated at a time when the sun’s warmth can be felt in the Northern Hemisphere, and the daylight hours outnumber the darkness. The ancient Irish only acknowledged two seasons: summer and winter. Summer begins on Beltane, winter on Samhain. So from a certain perspective, today marks the first day of summer.
Tonight, Steph, Ori and I will be celebrating Beltane with a bonfire and some tall glasses of sunny mead from a favorite local supplier. We saved the branches from last year’s Christmas tree to use as tinder. When we went to move them yesterday, we noticed nature had other plans. A pair of Dark-Eyed Juncos had set up a nest in our kindle-bin, and laid a clutch of eggs!
We had intended to use the dead branches to create light. Instead, they are creating life. Somewhat one in the same, I think.
Conventionally speaking, the bottom of the food web here on planet Earth consists of what we commonly call “producers”, which are autotrophic organisms like phytoplankton, algae, mosses, grass, and so on. Autotrophic is a word we use to describe organisms that make their own food. And one of the main ingredients in an autotroph’s cookbook is, in fact, light.
Each morning the sun pours a fresh bowl of delicious photons over the horizon, and our wonderful autotrophs utilize that light energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into chemical energy (sugar) through photosynthesis. Without that light, there’s no sugar. And without sugar, there’s no advanced life.
So through a web of dynamic gastronomical interconnectivity, humans are able to eat the very fruits of light itself. And because of light, we are able to be alive. Light isn’t just something that humans bask in, light is an intrinsic part of the human recipe.
If you want to make a human, you need light.
In more ways than one.
It is suspected that proto-humans began using fire between 1.5 and 2 million years ago.
That’s a long relationship.
We evolved alongside fire. So did our culture. So did our consciousness.
Fire allowed us to stay awake longer. It warded away predators, so we could sleep deeper sleep and dream deeper dreams. It changed how we eat and what we could eat, and it changed our brains alongside our digestive systems. Fire has played a central role in storytelling and gathering and the forging of societal bonds across cultures. Fire is magic.
There is something inherently mesmerizing about gazing into fire light. Scientists have observed that gazing into fire can lower blood pressure, heart rate, and cortisol levels. Gazing into fire can induce a sense of safety and comfort, and stimulate creativity. Gazing into fire is meditative. It is meditation.
We are drawn to fire. But contemporary life offers us very little fire time. After over a million years of intimately relating to fire every single day, we have, in just over one hundred years, abruptly reduced, if not completely eliminated, our time with fire. It was a sudden break up. An unacknowledged and unmourned divorce.
But we are drawn to fire. And so, if you find yourself frequently pulled towards the flickering light of your phone, if you find yourself pulled towards the false-fire of the endless social media scroll, you might want to put down your device and consider the state of yourself and your relationship to light. You are a moth. But where, and what, is your flame?
If fire gazing is meditation, then the false-fire of social media scrolling might just be a form of anti-meditation. In a passive state of consumption, you might take traumatic or troubling visions into your subconscious, without acute awareness of the accumulating psychic residue. It is unusual and new for the brain to observe sexually suggestive influencing, photos from a war zone, and pictures of your friend’s new puppy, all within micro seconds of each other. Instead of lowering your stress, this false-fire might leave you feeling somewhat apart from yourself. Disassociated, yet addicted to gazing deeper. Hungry, with an itch you need to scratch. If people seem a little off-kilter on the ol’ internet, it’s almost certainly because they are. It’s hard to be real when you’re not.
What is the solution? Maybe seek out some real fire to gaze into. If you would like to cultivate a magical experience within the mundane of modernity, simply buy yourself a candle. If you’d like to buy yourself a very special candle, I recommend these ones made by my buddies Ben and Sochi, that are altogether quite beautiful.
Regardless of where you get your candle, you should place it somewhere safe where it won’t light the rest of your house on fire. We would call this kind of fire too much of a good thing. The next step is to light your candle. And the next step is to look at it.
Relax your mind, gaze into the flame, breathe deeply, and do your best to let go of your thoughts as you watch your little light dance. After a while, close your eyes. Continue breathing. Continue seeing the fire. This is your fire, now, and it is precious. Try to hold it, but it is okay if your mind wanders elsewhere. If you remember you’re wandering, wander back to the fire, like a hunter returning home from the hunt. Sit by your internal fire, relax, and observe.
Perhaps try to do this for twenty minutes, or however long feels right to you. Then open your eyes, extinguish the candle, and say thank you.
If you find yourself struggling to feel well and balanced after flipping through the day’s news, perhaps try making candle gazing a daily ritual, and see how you adapt over time. Observe how you gaze into your phone in contrast. See if you sense anything different.
It is also helpful to keep a journal nearby your candle. Spend a couple moments dumping your thoughts onto the paper before you begin your ritual. Not prose, just scribbles of whatever needs to be vented out of you. Then light your candle and begin your gazing. When you’re done, if it is safe to do so (and only if it is safe to do so), you could burn your initial writing in a proper vessel, imagining those intrusive thoughts burning as the paper turns to ash. What's more, you could conclude by writing down some quick bullet points of pertinent thoughts or visions that may have appeared during your candlemancy that are worth saving. This may be your gold.
And just like that, you have started a relationship with your own internal fire via your own personal external fire. If the external world is just a byproduct of the internal world, then it is wise to pay attention to what this light may uncover inside of us. Remember, we have everything we need to solve the problem of us.
It is wise to listen to the LIGHT.
I end this edition of the SBM with a song sung by my friends Brian, Danielle, and Jess, who call themselves “song catchers”. Here is one of their catches - “Candle Song” - which might be a nice accompaniment to your candle gazing. May you move forward this month in personal peace.
“Even though there’s darkness around the candle
Focus on the flame.
Even though there might be fear and doubt
You don’t have to be afraid. Or ashamed.
Should you find yourself wounded and bleeding
Don’t focus on the pain.
Oh, did you know?
You get to choose what you pay attention to.”
Beautiful post, friend - thank you for mentioning us. Trataka for all!