Enchanté
Nike

Past the arch, up the stairs, something luminous waits at the end of the hall. You don't know yet what draws you. The Louvre is designed to make you small — every pillar, every deliberate recession of stone — so that she can make you large.

You have been walking toward her since you entered.

She reigns over the central landing — larger than life, spectacular in deportment. Shoulders back. Wings raised. All these people ascending toward her — tourists, students, honeymooners — none of them know they are in a procession.

But they are. The camera sees what the eye misses. This is what shamanic photography reveals: the sacred event hiding inside the ordinary one. The pilgrimage that doesn't know it's a pilgrimage.

Every person on those stairs is approaching something older than the building, older than France, older than the Rome that named her Victoria.

She stands on the prow of her ship and she is moving. Her sea-legs meet the water's challenge. Wings thrust upward and fore, engaging the wind. The breeze rustles her dress and snaps it taut.

She is leading Samothracian warriors into naval battle. She pre-ordains victory. She celebrates freedom.

The Louvre shimmers and we are on a hillside above the Aegean — the prow of her ship grown from native grey marble, the white of her skin glowing in the sun.

Her heart-light is so powerful that I am impelled to ascend the inner staircase, and dare to not hide my lamp under a bushel. Now with the radiance of our dual suns, agapé moves through marble and flesh alike, distilling both to mercurial spirit.

Now we are Anahata — that which is unhurt — and our thought-intentions become wing-ed messengers of future forms.