Text & source
יהוה
the four-letter Name; traditionally unpronounced, read aloud as Adonai
The Tetragrammaton: the Name of God, set at the four corners around the bird
Source: The Divine Name; the peacock as a creature of Tiferet (beauty, balance, compassion). On creation called "very good," see Genesis 1:31 · בראשית א׳:ל״א.
The peacock came out of my love for medieval manuscripts, where the bird often stood for immortality. I was less interested in repeating that meaning than in living inside it. I think of this peacock as a creature of Tiferet, the sefirah of beauty, balance, and compassion at the center of the tree. The letters of the Divine Name stand around it because I imagine the bird as made of sacred language: something timeless becoming feather, color, and flesh.
That is exactly where the tension I care about lives. An eternal soul is set inside a body that ages and comes apart, and the work is not to look down on the body but to inhabit it well: through attention, conduct, and respect for the vessel. I think this is part of what it means that God looks at creation and calls it very good: not that anything lasts, but that mortality itself belongs to the goodness of being alive. The peacock's radiance matters because it will not stay.