Jacob's Ladder - a painting by Darius Gilmont, Biblical artist

Between Heaven and Earth

I made this painting a couple of years ago, shortly after finishing the Daniel painting. Inspired by the angel from that project, I wanted to experiment a bit more with angels, which is a difficult subject. The story of Jacob’s Ladder is about the bridge between heaven and earth so in Jewish tradition it is a very delicate subject aesthetically. Nevertheless, I’m trying to make them dance, swirl and move and be relevant to all. This is really a work in progress, and I may add gold to some of the wings, and see what happens with dots and/or patterning here and there in the background…. In the meantime, here are a couple of interesting comments about the story of Jacob’s ladder…..

Being like the angels

Rabbi Ari Kahn synthesies various Jewish sources: “Yaakov (Jacob) sees the ladder, with its feet on the ground and its head in heaven, and he draws a remarkable conclusion: He himself can be like that ladder. He can live simultaneously in the physical and spiritual worlds. He can bridge the gap, and live his life as a quest to achieve spirituality and holiness, continually climbing up the ladder from earth to heaven. At that moment, he vows to devote his physical resources to his quest for holiness, and to climb that ladder just as he saw the angels do.”

Touching the Transcendent

Jordan Peterson: “…..this story of Jacob’s Ladder has really possessed the imagination of the West and there’s a reason for that; it’s because it’s an archetypal story. Because the idea of a ladder that reaches to heaven is one of the oldest ideas of mankind……..And it’s a hallmark of psychedelic experience – that’s another way of thinking about it – which is a very peculiar thing………From the Judaeo-Christian perspective, one of the things you have to understand is that G-d is beyond space and time. He’s not in the universe. He’s outside the universe in some manner. And so, the idea that you have an experience of G-d and it’s ‘up’ ……the ‘up’ is the best the human imagination can do with what’s essentially a form of extra-dimensional experience………..So now there’s this idea that there’s the possibility of opening up a line of communication between the human psyche and the transcendent divine.”