The Seba library treats Silk in 9 passages, across 6 authors (including Woodman, Marion, Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Thomas Cleary, Liu Yiming).
The fashioning into silk, as in Táhirih’s use of her silk handkerchief, probably had something to do with the transformation of the sow’s ear, the corporeal body into the subtle body, making the corporeal body transparent, translucent
Woodman reads silk as the archetypal symbol of the subtle body’s emergence from gross matter, linking it to feminine soul-perception and spiritual unveiling.
, Conscious Femininity: Interviews With Marion Woodman, 1993thesis
the Buddha took a silken handkerchief, tied a knot in it, held it up and asked Ananda: ‘What is this?’ Ananda replied: ‘A silk-handkerchief in
Govinda employs the Buddha’s silk handkerchief as a concrete pedagogical instrument illustrating that liberation is the untying of the knots of one’s own being rather than an external acquisition.
, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, 1960thesis
adornment in the hills and groves, the roll of silk is small. ‘Hills and groves’ are the wide open spaces where there are no people, and no social concerns. A small amount of silk, yet rolled up, means there are no formalities to be concerned about.
Liu I-ming (Cleary trans.) interprets the small roll of silk as a symbol of austere self-sufficiency that withdraws from social convention without collapsing into mere quietism.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis
generation after generation his family made a living by bleaching silk in water. A traveler heard about the salve and offered to buy the prescription for a hundred measures of gold.
Zhuangzi uses the silk-bleaching family as a parable on the radical context-dependence of knowledge and skill: the same salve that kept hands chapped-free in silk-bleaching could, differently applied, win territory and a noble fief.
, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013supporting
The Paradise of Amida. a.d 18th century. Silk tapestry. Musee Guimet, Paris… Color on silk. Koyasan Museum, Wakayama, Japan.
Campbell’s art-historical catalogue situates silk as the privileged sacred medium for Buddhist paradise imagery, functioning as the material substrate of hierophanic vision.
, The Mythic Image, 1974supporting
the queen, Repanse de Schoye: radiant as a dawn breaking, clothed in Arabian silk, and she bore on a deep green cloth of gold-threaded silk the Joy of Paradise, both root and branch. That was the object called the Grail.
Campbell presents silk as the royal and sacral vestment of the Grail bearer, encoding in its luminosity the paradisiacal and feminine dimensions of the mysterium tremendum.
, Creative Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume IV, 1968supporting
at each of the stations for the Deities of the Ten Directions the officiant made offerings, gages, of silk and gold dragons. Those pledges served as assurances for covenants sworn with the gods.
Kohn documents silk as a ritual currency of covenant in Daoist levee ceremonies, its quantity calibrated to social rank and its presentation functioning as a binding pledge between the human and divine orders.
, Daoism Handbook, 2000supporting
Gold lotus-blossom poles, purple and gold title-tablets and blue-green silk cordons encircled the altar.
Kohn’s account of Tang princess ordination depicts silk cordons as constitutive elements of sacred altar space, marking the boundary between consecrated and profane domains.
, Daoism Handbook, 2000supporting
he returned the horse with a load of gold and silk on its back. Now I say, even the emperor did not keep what was not useful to him and returned it.
Dōgen employs gold and silk as exemplary worldly goods to illustrate the monastic principle of retaining only what is truly useful on the path, the material richness of silk here serving as foil for spiritual simplicity.
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