For the Angels - 3:01; Three's the Charm (annotated)

Angel of Death Victorious - bronze (distressed) - 1923, Herman Matzen.
Also known as the "Haserot Angel," this monument is located in Lakeview Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio. Above is my B/W version of a photograph found here, credited to Steven Jupina.
(All images within this post can be clicked to enlarge)

"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the hierarchies of angels?
Even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart,
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying."

"Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you,
almost deadly birds of the soul, knowing about you.
Where are the days of Tobias, when one of you, veiling his radiance,
stood at the front door, slightly disguised for the journey, no longer appalling;
(a young man like the one who curiously peeked through the window).
But if the archangel now, perilous, from behind the stars took even one step down toward us
our own hearts, beating higher and higher, would beat us to death.
Who are you?"

- First stanzas from the First and Second Elegies of the Duino Elegies (Duineser Elegien), by Rainer Maria Rilke, 1923. The full English translations by Stephen Mitchell of the first two Elegies can be found here. However, I can't hardily recommend any of the other translations found online. Ideally, it should be read the way Rilke wrote it: in its original German form. Incidentally, Rilke's question "where are the days of Tobias" refers to an enigmatic scripture of ancient origin which relates the story of the youth, Tobias. and the archangel Raphael (See the "A Brief History of Angels" section).

"I turned my sight back to the angel when, suddenly, I noticed his hands - particularly his right hand which was reaching out to me. In English, he said, “Come into my world.” I was wondering why he was speaking to me in English when, suddenly, I heard the translation: “Entre dans mon monde,” and even in German: “Komm in meinem Welt.”

Then, through the music and the angel, I entered into that other world, which exists inside the painting. The whole time, the figures had been calling me there.

The angel changed my appearance, and I became just like one of the little people in the painting. I received a long cape, and I was crowned with coral (just like the woman in profile with the elaborate headdress). It was like a ceremony, initiating me into paradise... I became an angel..."

- Excerpt from Un Autre Monde by Myrette St. Ange (possibly a fictional character) (?) "translated" by Visionary artist, L. Caruna. The painting referred to is an actual painting by Visionary artist Robert Venosa. (inset, above, is a detail from the painting.)


"For painter and philosopher Robert Venosa, art and spirituality were simultaneous. Venosa was a visionary in the most real sense of the word: much of his artistic expression was deeply connected to visions that he had of higher dimensional beings whom he perceived as angels, although a different sort of angel than you might see in popular religious art. At several crucial moments in Venosa's life he was visited by an entity that seemed transcendent of time and space, yet was partially visible in the third dimension. These experiences affected Robert deeply and he attempted for the rest of his life to paint them (example, inset left). Many of his well known works were inspired by these visions, including twin angels Castor and Pollux, and Seraphim."

"Spirit energy, like all universal energy, must manifest itself in form and texture at its own vibratory level. We, in our present stage of time-space evolution are unfortunately limited in our perception of these transcendent substances. But the visionary, in his creative expression, must overstep these limits if he is to resolve his task of bridging the gulf between accepted reality and spiritual postulation”."

- Two quoted paragraphs from Reality Sandwich's article on Robert Venosa {1936 - 2011}: Viva Venosa. The second quote is from the artist and was excerpted from his 1978 publication "Manas Manna." All three paintings posted here can be found on his website.

***

Sorry for the delay, comrades, but my mental engine decided to stall last week just at the crucial moment... possibly flooded by too much angelology! Then again, maybe I've just been wrestling with my own angels lately... or maybe I've been wrestling with yours; it's difficult to say. Understanding the Language of Angels is a little like understanding the Language of Birds - and maybe they're one and the same - but, one thing I've learned: it's impossible to pin down an angel. Moreover, angels are not always "nice."  But, whether you "believe" in them or not - and, very possibly, they couldn't care less -  it is always they who have the advantage. Like birds - up to an including Rilke's "deadly birds of the soul" - they can merely fly away. (Or, even worse, tamper with your mental engine!)

Of course, there are angels and then there are angels. For some people angels are guised as beneficent strangers; those enigmatic humans who seemingly come to us out of thin air (and just in the nick of time) to save the day. For an artist, the Muse is a kind of angel. For a child, a guardian angel is sensed as a protective force. And, as for mystics, well, they seem to be able to experience them firsthand.

As a matter of fact, it is often artists, mystics and children* who actually see angels. William Blake saw angels... especially as a child, and specifically in trees. The American artist Robert Venosa spent his lifetime attempting to represent the "higher dimensional entities" he saw (inset, right).** And, while the poet Rainer Maria Rilke devoted his Duino Elegies to angels, it is also said that his initial inspiration - and the first line of his poem - came from an angel whose voice was carried to him on the wind. The Swiss scientist (and mystic) Emanuel Swedenborg not only saw angels***, but wrote extensively about his conversations with them in a book entitled Heaven and Hell. He writes (found here):

"On the grounds of all my experience, which has lasted for several years now, I can say with full confidence that in their form, angels are completely human. They have faces, eyes, ears, chests, arms, hands, and feet. They see each other, hear each other, and talk to each other. In short, they lack nothing that belongs to humans except that they are not clothed with a material body."

As for the Christian mystics, Saint Francesca comes to mind. She even convinced Church authorities that her guardian angel was a true, substantial entity. In fact, she was formally declared the Patron Saint of Automobile Drivers, because her alleged angel was said to appear with a lantern to guide her whenever she travelled.

And, then there's the matter of Saint Teresa (of Ávila) - not to be confused with Thérèse of Lisieux - and her "ecstasy," but that's so juicy, I'm saving it for later...

Werner Hornung & Joma Sipe (An Interlude)

Romantic Utopia - digital art - © 2014, Werner Hornung

Well, it's time for another interlude... and as I haven't featured any contemporary (2-D) artists in a long time, I'd like to present two amazing artists I came across recently on the web; each a transdimensionalist in his own way.

The first is the German-born digital artist Werner Hornung, an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, whose artistic career began in Paris in the early 1970s and continues there till this day.

His digital work is intricate, dramatic, surreal and multi-dimensional. I am particularly drawn to Romantic Utopia above, but it represents merely one example of the mysterious and multi-layered magic inherent in his work; most especially when the images come to life in an animated .gif format on his must-see website. He also has an exhibit at MOCA's virtual museum, and more of his enigmatic images can be found here and here.

___________________________

A sampling of images from Lumine Stellarum - © 2015, 2016 Joma Sipe
(click to enlarge)

The second artist I present to you is the Portuguese visionary, and sacred geometer, Joma Sipe. I don't think I've seen any geometrical work in the past that even compares to his masterful (and meticulous) drawings. He uses gold and silver ink on a black background and then goes so far as to embed small crystals in his images, illuminating them in such a way that the effect is truly breathtaking. His subject matter includes many of the geometric and esoteric symbols discussed in my previous post plus numerous others, so he's particularly relevant here. Above is just a tiny sampling of his work - a visionary's view of the stars - but to truly experience the magic of Joma Sipe, I recommend visiting his website, or his YouTube channel, where the two videos (below) featuring his work were found.

Matrices of Light & Shadow; Alex and Allyson Grey

Spiritual Energy System (left); Universal Mind Lattice (right) - acrylic on canvas - 1981, Alex Grey

"Looking at Grey’s paintings and other works on display, Hoffberger said, “Given the way technology is moving, do we want to become like machines? With each new high-tech invention, how do you download a ‘you’ into an ‘it’?” Grey’s powers-of-the-universe paintings, with their images of trees as fecund bodies, along with choruses of prehistoric animals, suns, eyeballs and planets, evoke an eternal, all-unifying, omnipresent spirit. Grey’s art seems more all-embracing than the ecumenical posturing of those praying, chanting, bead-rattling leaders of so-called organized religions who sometimes pause to look beyond their own belief systems and pay a little lip service to the dream of world peace."

- From the January, 2014 Hypoallergic article: “Human, Soul & Machine”: Big Brother Watching — and Other Digital Discontents"

"Love, consciousness, and creativity are the highest refinements of the cosmic evolutionary force."

"The Inevitable consequence of Love is the building of Temples."

- Two quotes by Alex Grey, found on his website.

***

"Secret Writing Magic Square with Mandala Border" - oil on wood - 1990, Allyson Grey

"Language is like a portal through which the inner world of order may pass into the outer world of chaos."

- Allyson Grey, from her website: Chaos, Order & Secret Writing.

***

In terms of the the Matrices (described here) and their relationship to the human body,  I don't think I've seem a better visual description than those presented by Visionary artist, Alex Grey in his amazing Chapel of Sacred Mirrors series. It's almost as if they were made to order for the musings of a Space Pagan, most especially his "Universal Mind Lattice," which he describes here:

 "No longer identified with or limited by our physical bodies, our essence is an individual fountain and drain of Light, interlocked with an infinite omni-directional network of similar energy cells, the interpenetrating consciousness of all beings and things."

The odd thing for me, at least, is - at the exact same time, and the exact same place (New York) - while Alex Grey was painting the huge canvases that would become the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (see video), a far less flamboyant artist (me), was envisioning something along vaguely similar lines...

Forevermore, Dr. Evermor - In Praise of a Steampunk Pioneer

"Dr. Evermor's Forevertron, built in the 1980s, is the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world, standing 50 ft. (15,2 m.) high and 120 ft. (36,5 m.) wide, and weighing 300 tons. It is housed in Dr. Evermore's Art Park on Highway 12, in the town of Sumpter, in Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States."
(Photo found here.)

"I don't think there’s any damn need to alter anything at any given point in time, because any kind of shape or form can be anything! It’s all in the way you look at it! I make that vast statement in the many birds I've created here. Those special bird bodies out there – I’ve got electric motors in them. Who says you can’t have electric motors in a bird to make it a power-bird? It’s a rebellious forum that I am presenting in all these things. If an art teacher says, “You can’t do that, you've got to have a bird body shaped like a bird body, I say, “The hell with that, I’ll put any kind of body I want on it!"

"This is a very different kind of art, because there’s never anything imposed on the piece itself - the parts are always used as they are. Thus, you have to put a little twist or torque into it, in order to get some kind of human communication between the finished piece and the more or less rigid, sterile, pre-existing shapes and forms. You have to get some kind of magic going there, and we have a lot of people who have come here, taken pictures, and then they go home and produce things. There are fifteen to twenty people out there trying to do Evermors, but they fail on just that issue of getting enough energy flowing so that the piece has a little magic."

- Two quotes from Dr. Evermor found in this interview.

Tom Every was a depressed man in 1983. At the age of 45, after a disillusioning battle with Big Brother, and in a state of chronic dissatisfaction with the burgeoning commercialism and de-humanizing artificiality he sensed in the modern world, Tom  - a former demolition expert, born in Brooklyn, Wisconsin - turned to the one thing he knew well: scrap metal; vintage industrial machinery. His epiphany arrived in the form of a fictional character - and a story - which emerged in his psyche at the time... the story of "Dr. Evermor", a Victorian inventor from Eggington, England, whose singular purpose was to build a spacecraft to the stars. But, this was no ordinary spacecraft; nor was its proposed destination found on any official celestial map. This vehicle was designed to propel Dr. Evermor to the center of creation - the phenomenal, virtually-timeless lap of "God"- on a magnetic beam of lightening within a magnetic force field, both conjured and fabricated by Evermor, for his first and final solo-mission.

Imbolc

Noosphere Day Image -  digital - Tatiana Plakhova
(Click to enlarge.)

"By her many graces I call to Brigit who graces us this day;

Grace of eye and grace of hand,

Grace of word and grace of will,

Grace of caring, grace of birthing, grace in mourning,

Grace of carriage, grace of courage,

Comforter and mother,

Brigit of the Blessings I name the one

Who blesses us this day!"

- Brigit Invocation from A Solitary Imbolc Ritual, Rob Henderson and Kami Landy, 1999

"Even after the Roman Catholics banned all Pagan ways, She was so firmly and permanently beloved, She was absorbed into Christianity as a saint. But the Wheel turns and we once more give honor to the Sun Goddess Bride (pronounced “breed” or “breej”), Brigit, or Brig(h)id. She is the Fire Goddess of Healing, Poetry, and Art. You can see Her embodied in the bright stars of the constellation we call Orion.

For millennia at Her temple at Kildare, Her priestesses, and later, the nuns of Her order, tended an eternal flame in Her honor. Although it was extinguished during the Burning Times (the Inquisition), in 1993, Sister Mary Minehan boldly re-lit St. Brigid’s flame in Kildare. It was lit again in 1997, in the square at Kildare by Ragny Skaisten, a member of the Norwegian Brigidine Sisters, at the opening of Her feast day, Feile Bhride."

- from Blessings of Imbolc!, Beth Owl, 2010*

There's sort of "Land of Milk & Honey" vibe about the pagan holiday of Imbolc (pronounced EEM bolg), also known and/or confused with the Christian holiday of Candlemas. While the actual date of the holiday varies, you can begin to see it in the change of light that occurs around this time. While winter isn't exactly over, it's possible to react like our ancestors must've reacted, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief: finally, a flicker of of hope on a previously desolate horizon.

Addendum

A series of drawings by Louise Despont - pencil on antique paper

"I think art is one way in which magical symbols and images can be presented to the public in a way that will not appear threatening. We know from the history of art in the past 100 years, that many genuine schools of occultism came forth to present themselves as what I am going to call mystical schools of painting, of sculpture and so forth. I am particularly concerned about one French school", says Bertiaux. "It is the pataphysical school. It was allied to Dada, surrealism, spiritualism and trance medium ship. The whole idea was that we would explore structures of the unconscious and come back renewed with a new kind of imagery and energy we can focus through works of art. The pataphysicians are my favorites, because what they sought to do was to create a kind of alternative science. I remember a pataphysician telling me, that as metaphysics is to physics, so pataphysics is to metaphysics, which meant an intuitive extension into the abstract or the transcendental or the less known aspects of experience."

 What were the characteristics of this school, I asked?

 "One of the characteristics would be their drawing of inspiration from dream states and a kind of somnambulistic meditation", says Bertiaux. "Another would be the idea that everything has a psychic history. This is related to “the cult of the found object” in modern art, the discovery of “the given.”

We know that there are many artists who will go around looking for what they call “a found

object” – actually they wouldn’t have to look very hard. According to the theory a found object

would “speak” to them and indicate to them that this was what was needed for the artwork of the artist.

The famous American sculptress Louise Nevelson - who worked with large assemblages and collages made from wood and wooden pieces - she had what I call her esoteric school", Bertiaux explains.

"These helpers of Louise Nevelson would get up very early in the morning. She lived in a town house in Manhattan, I believe; and they would go up and down the alleys, looking for discards. They were all kinds of individuals who were perhaps misfits in the outer world, but she believed them to be tremendously psychic. They all worked for her as her technicians, her helpers, in finding objects and wrapping them up in newspapers and paper bags, bringing them home; and then when they had all these treasures before them, they would let the objects tell them where to use them. And this came from a kind of psychic dialogue with the found object – which, I might add, was very similar to what Carl Jung taught many of his patients, to engage in with many natural things in their own experience."

- From: Arts and the Occult - An interview with Michael Bertiaux by Bjarne Salling Pedersen (.pdf file)

***

During the latter half of my research of the astrological sign Capricorn (and its constellation Capricornus) I stumbled upon an interesting man, Michael Bertiaux (b. January 18, 1935). According to Wiki, he is best known for his occult classic, "Voudon Gnostic Workbook", described as: "a 615-page compendium... spanning the sub-fields of Voodoo, Neo-Pythagoreanism, Thelema and Gnosticism". I somehow intuited that this man was someone I needed to acquaint myself with... and, when I pursued the .pdf file link provided, I was really amazed... 

Patron Saint # 3: Agnes Pelton - Transcendentalist Painter

"Resting in twilight after reading Dostoyevsky, a quietness, thinking if I should start a landscape or go on with abstraction, and feeling poorly, can I do my best with them? ...still deeper quiet, and it seemed there was a Presence, shadowy but Real - and if so, is this He? It seemed so, and this is my first such intimation - it was an artist presence of deep, gentle power - remote, but directed toward me. So it seemed the abstractions must go on, not to stop them ever, from discouragement."

- Agnes Pelton, via a 1942 journal entry

Agnes Pelton was born in Germany to American parents in 1881. More or less a naturalist painter at the beginning of her career, she joined the Transcendentalist Painter Group - which, according to a Wiki article on Raymond Johnson: "The aim of the Transcendental Painting Group was to defend, validate and promote abstract art. They sought to carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world, through new expressions of space, color, light and design. Other members of the Transcendental Painting Group were Ed Garman, Florence Miller Pierce, Horace Towner Pierce, Agnes Pelton, Stuart Walker, Dane Rudhyar, William Lumpkins, and Lawren Harris." - in the 1930's during a trip to New Mexico. (This group is not to be confused with the American landscape painters who were also referred to as "Transcendentalists" in the early 1800's.)  The goal of the Transcendentalist Painter Group was primarily enlightenment via abstraction and Jungian archetypes, with many of the members involved in Theosophy and various other esoteric pursuits. The spokesperson for the group was the renowned astrologer, Dane Rudyar, who is remembered probably more for his astrological charts than he is for his art. Examples of group's work can be found together on this page. The group disbanded at the beginning of the second World War.

I was first introduced to Pelton's work in the 1970's, when I fell in love with one of her images "Star Gazer" I'd found in a book about Visionary artists. (Note: Neo-visoinary images can be found online at Lila.) I immediately felt she was a kindred spirit, but, as the internet didn't exist in those days, information was hard to come by and, in the case of Agnes Pelton, close to impossible. She, like so many other female artists of the past centuries simply fell through the cracks, marginalized by a predominately male art regime, and, in her case, ignored by a public who preferred more conventional figurative imagery.

As you can see by the images above - "Star Gazer" is the first image on the left - Pelton's work was at once iconic and luminous. It's as if she, too, was aware of the "form language" (previously discussed) but in her imagery the forms are illuminated from within, like Chinese lanterns hovering over a deserted landscape. Then again, she considered herself a Theosophist, so this luminosity might have been, on a conscious level, part of a philosophical agenda.

Nancy Strow Sheley writes in her 2003 article about Pelton - Intellectualizing Ecstacy: The Organic and Spiritual Abstractions of Agnes Pelton - "Pelton outlined her purpose for painting in a journal entry entitled 'Knowledge.' She copied the following passage from an unidentified Theosophist: 'Spiritual transactions must be translated into the language of mortal senses that they be understood, so as to be of practical benefit to mortals who desire to be redeemed from mortality.' These words articulate Pelton’s design--to translate spiritual messages with her paintings. In brackets on that page, she added her own comments: 'This is where the forms of the natural world must appear in a picture, or can do so--not for themselves but to convey thought as future light.' Thus, light is a both a symbol and a subject in Pelton’s abstractions. It represents enlightenment and ecstasy; it also suggests inspiration and the creative force."

A number of abstract artists - specifically Kandisnky - were influenced by Theosophy (and Spiritualism) at the time, as well as a number of Eastern philosophies; all of it representing a cure for the Western religious contaminants that had infected culture for centuries, the intensifying materialism of scientific inquiry, and the existential shock that had followed in the wake of the first World War. The cure, in the case of Theosophy, was only theoretically different from the disease and historically less successful, though shreds of it resurfaced in the "New Age". But, the interesting thing about Theosophy is that it, too, had it's own version of a form language: "thought forms".  I own two Theosophical books about the subject (the text of one which can be found here) but never felt inclined to actually read them for personal reasons. (My psyche seemingly developed an allergic reaction to all texts deliberately designed and/or conceived to "enlighten" it.)  Helena Petrovna Blavatsky herself was a very intriguing woman, but, it's as if she was compelled to (merely) replace one religious doctrine with another... one mountain of irritating dogma with another mountain of irritating dogma. Still, I'm not one to question belief systems that keep individuals afloat. In the end, it's, well, whatever works. (Note: An interesting online biography of Blavatsky can be found here.)

I suppose what interests me most about Agnes Pelton is that I suspect she had a "muse".  She mentions it in the uppermost quote as "He", but something tells me she's not referring a to religious figure. In the end it doesn't really matter how she interpreted the presence of the muse - simply that she chose to recognize its existence and write about it. The muse to me, represents a true communion with the unconscious realm, and we find a glimpse of this realm in her paintings.

As for Agnes herself, she spent the last 30 years of her life living alone in Cathedral City, California. Her last painting, the one she was working on at the time of her death,  is the last one (from left to right) in the group of paintings shown above, entitled "Light Center". painted in 1961.

Paintings by Agnes Pelton featured here (click on images for a larger view):
Upper from left to right: Star Gazer, 1929; Fire Sounds, 1930; The Voice, 1930
Lower from left to right: Messengers, 1932; Wells of Jade, 1931; Light Center, 1961

Patron Saint #2: Roberto Matta

“We should one day represent what we don’t see.”

Roberto Matta

"Visionary artist Roberto Matta (1911-2002) was arguably one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His high profile association with poet Andre Breton’s group of Surrealists only initiated his own personal evolution and style, which culminated in addressing the realm of the subconscious and the invisible. Thus, Matta is the patron saint of so-called “metaphysical art,” the graphic depiction of energies beyond the physical realities of everyday life.

“Matta – The Eye of a Surrealist” is a brilliant documentary by filmmaker Jane Crawford, which shows the artist exploring and simultaneously explaining the creative process. The film is also a cinematic retrospective of Matta’s life and his work with interview commentaries by art historians, curators and fellow artists.

Trying to explain his own personal creative process, Matta says, “If you start with a white thing [referring to a canvas or piece of paper], you are going to project things you already know. Make it dirty somehow and then you will start using hallucinations.”

These “hallucinations” are simply the power of imagination as when “people see in a cloud an elephant and begin to hallucinate to suggest something [to their mind.]” We make our own realities in other words, says Matta, and art is the expression of bringing the hidden into the visible."

- Uri Dowbenko - excerpt from “Matta – The Eye of a Surrealist: Mapping the Dimensions of Consciousness" - 2005

Chilean artist, Roberto Matta, I think, is often overlooked as a Surrealist, because his work never fit comfortably in that category. You can see in the article above that his work has been sited as "Visionary", "Metaphysical", and Surrealist. Ultimately, for the artist especially, this presents a problem. Even by my own definitions, Matta, like myself, was both a Transfigurist and Transdimensionalist. Ultimately, I think Transfigurism (and you'll note I'm reverting to the more simplified terms) and Transdimensionalism are one and the same; Transdimensionalism being the main category and Transfigurism being a subset in that category.


Matta is certainly one of the "patron saints" of this blog. I consider him one of the first true transdimensionalists. For more views of his amazing work and his hundreds of paintings, visit Tim Rock's amazing Matta gallery found here (this link also appears on the sidebar of this blog).

(Oil paintings by Matta in this post... Upper: Let All Flowers Bloom - 1952; Middle: Untitled -1959; Lower: Dar a la vida una luz - 1970.)