Monet and Meditation

May 2023

Paris is the chic home of many of Claude Monet's famous Water Lilies, (French spelling used) found variously in the Musée Marmottan Monet, Musée d'Orsay and L'Orangerie and many of us will have delighted in seeing Monet originals. Perhaps many of us have only appreciated the true beauty of Monet's Water Lilies when we have viewed them up close in person, rather than in the oft-seen flat, two-dimensional prints; as only then does the true depth dimension of the transparent clarity of the water become revealed beneath the pond's surface on which the famous Water Lilies float with Monet's signature gentle pastel-infused beauty.

However, how many of us know that Monet's artistic genius was also put to meditative use? Inspired by a television documentary a few years ago about the $36million renovations of L'Orangerie to protect huge original Monet's, which were boarded up in situ during extensive renovations to restore the original light architecturally intended for seeing the Water Lilies in natural light, I was delighted finally to pay a visit to L'Orangerie to see Monet's famed meditative oval rooms. The Water Lilies, which are designed in eight panels, are an impressive two meters high and over ninety meters in length. They were arranged in two oval rooms which, interestingly, form the Infinity symbol. Significantly, the East-West orientation of the rooms are in the path of the Sun, which famously links with the  same axis of the Louvre and L'Arc de Triomphe; the full name of which, I discovered, actually is L'Arc de Triomphe d'Étoile, translated as the Triumphal Arch of the Star, so called because of its position on the radiating twelve avenues or points of the juncture of L'Avenue des Champs-Élysées, which is seen to be connected with the sacred geometry of Parisian Freemasonry. Of course, Louis XIV was called the Sun King, or Le Roi Soleil, as he chose the Sun as his Royal insignia to symbolise his Divine Right of Kingship and rule. The Sun is also the symbol of the Greek God, Apollo, God of Peace and the Arts and links with White Eagle's symbolism of the star and sacred geometry, as Apollo is the Star which gives light to all things. White Eagle says, 'The divine mind which God has given to all men is as a splendid blazing star with many facets, its many rays of truth, all coming from the one central truth,' like the twelve radiating astrological constellations designed in the architectural symbolism of the new temple, and similar to the twelve radiating points from L'Arc de Triomphe d'Étoile.

In the same way that my mind has wondered from the original meditative function of Monet's Water Lilies and has become immersed in the fascinations of symbolisms and sacred geometry, I will bring my mind back, gently, to Monet's intended meditations. I learned that the oval Water Lilies rooms were designed specifically by Claude Monet as a space for meditation, in the 1920's, before meditation has since become à la mode. Visitors were therefore asked to preserve the silence.

Monet's huge Water Lilies filled the surrounding oval walls and the womb-like effect was to feel, as if immersed in a huge water pond of Water Lilies - Blissful! Like lotus flowers, the Water Lilies serve as beautiful spiritual imagery for spiritual realisation in meditation, and is used as an image in many White Eagle meditations, as well as in Buddhist and Sufi meditations. In many eastern traditions, the lotus flower is a symbol of enlightenment, illumination or Self-realisation, revealed or recognised in immersive meditation, where the beautiful light of the soul, which is hidden within the symbolic waters of the psyche, flowers on the surface of the waters of Life, whilst grounded in the muddy earth below, from which the Thousand Petalled Lotus flowers. Water is a common imagery for the psyche or soul and it is no coincidence that the Zoroastrian Water Goddess, Anahita or Yazata (Angel), is symbolised as a Lotus Flower, showing the thread of Ancient Wisdom revealed in the inner absorptive work of meditation, woven throughout the ages from Persia to Paris!

I like to see meditation as a kind of inner, experiential, immersion within the proverbial waters of our soul consciousness; like deep sea diving within to find the hidden fruits de mer, the pearls in the oyster, the soft lotus, or pure water lily that rises to the light that shines within, as the waters of our consciousness begin to settle and still, like the pure waters of a clear blue pond. In the same way that it is only when we view Monet's Water Lilies up close, that the true depth dimension of the transparent clarity of the water is revealed, so too, is it only in meditation that we can begin to perceive the transparent clarity within the waters of our soul-consciousness, which reveal ever-deepening depth dimensions, like looking into deep, clear blue water, as painted by Monet. So, if you ever need a little more inspiration for your regular practice of meditation, what easier-to-hand meditation tool is there, just to imagine yourself immersed in a huge pond of Monet's Water Lilies - and a good excuse to visit Paris if you want to experience it first hand in your physical bodies!

As White Eagle reminds us: 'So when you are in meditation and you are fully open like a beautiful flower, like the thousand-petalled lotus of the head chakra, or the many petalled lotus of the heart chakra, you as a spirit are actually in that flower, and that flower builds up all around you in the form of a most beautiful temple, a spiritual temple. You are in the temple of your own soul and spiritual world.'  C'est formidable!

– Rev. Jenny Miller

First published in Stella Polaris, Vol. 72, No. 3, April - May, 2023