Joy is not pleasure. Pleasure is a response to stimulus. Nor is it happiness. Happiness rises and falls with circumstance. Joy is something more structural. The Sumerian initiatic school understood it differently: not a feeling that visits you, but a quality you either cultivate or you do not. In the end, joy is a choice.
The second chakra is the seat of magnetism. It answers to the Gemini-Leo axis, which governs the two conditions that make that choice possible.
Gemini is education, knowledge, the inner material built through study. Leo is self-care, the way you present yourself, the body you maintain, the light you allow yourself to project.
Joy requires both. You cannot choose joy from a position of neglect. The person who has built nothing inside has nothing to radiate. The person who has built substance but refuses to care for the vessel that carries it remains invisible. Substance unseen is substance wasted. Radiance without substance is performance.
A person who cultivates both education and self-care can radiate joy. Not because circumstances are perfect. Because the conditions for joy have been built from within.
Joy does not happen to you. It is something you build.
Visually, the piece centers on the Sumerian secret seal of Leo, woven with hermetic geometry.
Giclée on 3mm aluminum Dibond
90 x 60 cm (~36 x 24 in)