Artwork by Kathrina Rupit
The Keepers of All Knowledge
November 24, 2022
Every single time I see an image constructed by Kathrina Rupit I get the feeling that I am being told something I already knew but I somehow forgot and that is what I call good art. In “The Keepers of All Knowledge” I am remembered of the forgotten priestesses whose knowledge we still dig out today in excavations all around the world. The Curanderas, the Vraci, the Ban-Drui, the Chamans, the old women of the hearth, The Keepers of All Knowledge. Mycology shows us today what the old women of the hearth already knew, the interconnections that Matter does bound by Mind and Spirit, or is it the other way around? Or is it simply a symbiosis? It seems that every single time we get a new outbreak in science or technology, somebody says that it was already known by old-folks tradition. The oldest largest organism of Planet Earth possibly 8.500 years old is a fungi. Destroying rock, dismantling the dead so it can give space for new life. The elders named the mushrooms: Flesh of the Gods. The need for balance in ones body, ones mind, ones spirit in an era of overflowing information seems today more poignant than ever but it is gathered in a symbol more than 5000 years ago; the triskelion. We killed those people the holders of information, we killed them as we still do it today. The women, the outspoken, the ones that lose their privilege to speak, their privilege for an old age so they can remind us how it is in the beating of our hearts where lays the language of the universe itself, a language we are all native too. It might seem over-dramatic, but this picture brings me back to a time when my grandma brought me to her old friends so they could share food recipes and techniques, secrets in the craft of the timing of the cakes, of the stews. Meanwhile little me stayed in their filled with flower gardens that also had spices, peppers, strawberries. I adore those old women and the memories they gave me, I imagine them in every culture that surrounds the earth, it is them that for me are the Keepers of All Knowledge, The Baba-Yagas the ones that know, the ones that are needed, the ones that sustain us, Mind, Body and Soul, the ones that unite us just like the fungi do. It’s curios how an image can have as many interpretations as eyes that see it and still reach a common ground. Good art reminds you things that you forgot you knew, cause it still listens to that sound of the heart that is the hearth that lights up meaning into our lives. With her piece “The Keepers of All Knowledge” I see a dedication not only to the amazing teachings of the kingdom of fungi but also to the people that bring us those teachings to light, so we won’t forget how to evolve how to adapt, how to redefine our own ecosystems. I see the grandmas, the baba – yagas and curanderas of the world.