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...

Revitalizing Vitalism; A Thought Experiment

"Aura" - digital/fractal - 2012, Renate S.

(Click on all images to enlarge)

Vitalism

1. a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from physicochemical forces

2. a doctrine that the processes of life are not explicable by the laws of physics and chemistry alone and that life is in some part self-determining

 - Definition of Vitalism

"He goes on to show how the particular properties of consciousness might arise from the physical laws that govern our universe. And he explains how these properties allow physicists to reason about the conditions under which consciousness arises and how we might exploit it to better understand why the world around us appears as it does.

For Tegmark, this paradox suggests that his mathematical formulation of consciousness is missing a vital ingredient. “This strongly implies that the integration principle must be supplemented by at least one additional principle,” he says.

- From the article: "Why Physicists Are Saying Consciousness Is A State Of Matter..."


"Barušs wrote: "Scientific materialism assures us that reality is a meaningless, incidental, mechanistic, collocation of improbable events."

He summarized some of the ways in which the materialist interpretation of reality has already broken down: quantum events are seen to be non-deterministic; time is no longer linear, as effects have been shown to precede their causes; particles change position depending on where one looks or what one decides to measure.

Finally, he said, “Materialism cannot explain … the sense of existence that people have for themselves.”

- From an August 20 article: 8 Scientists Contemplate Place of Human Consciousness in Science  (New quote just found, August 22; hat-tip to Bruce Duensing!)

***

"Throughout the ages men have been intuitively aware of such a center. The Greeks called it a man's inner Daimon, in Egypt, it was expressed by the concept of Ba-soul; and the Romans worshipped it as the "Genius" native to each individual..."

- from: "Seeing With The Mind's Eye: The History, Techniques and Uses of Visualization", 1975,  Michael and Nancy Samuels

"Is the earth dead or alive? The ancient cultures of east and west and the native peoples of America saw the earth as a mother, alive, active, and responsive to human action. Greeks and Renaissance Europeans conceptualized the cosmos as a living organism, with a body, soul, and Spirit, and the earth as a nurturing mother with respiratory, circulatory, reproductive, and elimination systems. The relationship between most peoples and the earth was an I-thou ethic of propitiation to be made before damming a brook, cutting a tree, or sinking a mine shaft. Yet for the past three hundred years, western mechanistic science and capitalism have viewed the earth as dead and inert, manipulable from outside, and exploitable for profits. The death of nature legitimated its domination. Colonial extractions of resources combined with industrial pollution and depletion have today pushed the whole earth to the brink of ecological destruction."

- From "Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World" - 1992, Carolyn Merchant.

"But what is it that shamans 'see' or 'know'? Shamanism is a kind of spiritual technology. It is a technology that is based on the animistic worldview much in the way that physical technology is based on the modern scientific worldview. Unlike modern science, however, which is based on the search for uniform laws that work the same way for everyone, shamanism has literally infinite forms of expression -- just as art, inspired creation, can take literally infinite forms and there are infinite cultural styles of art, yet the word "artist," like the word "shaman," has a cross-cultural meaning. (Indeed, art itself originated as a tool and expression of the shaman. Shamans are a kind of inspired artist, channeling a common source of spiritual energy in their own unique ways. Art as merely decorative is a modern, desacralized echo of the real purposes of art.) "

- from an article: Indigenous Shamanism, Animism, and the Spirits (by "Gayle") found here.

***

"Without an active agent, an ordering center, or an Intelligence, "consciousness" becomes a rather hollow proposition; another one of those phenomena which, if merely viewed as another mechanical quality arising from matter, has no intrinsic meaning. It has no "cause" and is no cause. It will not build a ship, invent a car, nor drive it. It will simply exist in a somnambulistic manner as a sort of passive, unspecified awareness. Consciousness, alone, does not create; and, by itself, cannot evolve. Consciousness alone, is not the answer to the existential quandary."

- Paragraph from a post file which never materialized, The Shamans of Spirit & The Shamans of Matter; Dia Sobin, June 12, 2014

"Because, who knows, but, hiding among those four famous "forces of nature" (recently renamed the "Fundamental Interaction") is an undiscovered ordering force, a "shadow" component permeating the matrix: intelligence, but wholly unspecific intelligence - without genre or gender - which, although diversified and expressed relative to the matter which interprets it, is also the architect of the matter it unfolds. I call it: Creatura... (most emphatically) not to be confused with religionist myths and its corresponding characters - example: "the man upstairs."

If "god is dead" religionists (specifically Western and Middle-Eastern varieties) killed it. They gave it limits; limits imposed by their own fears, politics and pathologies."

- Paragraphs deleted from a previous post, and added to a collection of notes; DS, June 28, 2014

"Creatura (singular and plural) - A creative Intelligence: the integrated ordering agent and organizing, self-referential noumenon present in all living organisms."

- A working definition of Creatura from a collection of notes; DS, July 1, 2014, posted July 28.

***

I was kind of on the fence about posting this "thought experiment"... I originally attempted to allude to it with a post containing a brief definition of Creatura. That didn't cut it for me, so I pulled it down (deleted post, July, 28, 2014). 

For the past few months however, this concept - admittedly a "Vitalist" concept (or, more appropriately, Revitalist), and not even a terribly original one - has been stirring around in my psyche, coloring just about all of my thoughts. I've drafted (and destroyed) a number of posts, but they all seem to have the same general theme; a theme I was planning to slowly build up to, but now I find I'm not going to have the time (I'm about to take an extended hiatus from the blogosphere). So, it's now or never... 

Ancient-Future Artifacts #3: Sherry Bellamy's Beads

My original title for the post that started it all - "Explorations of An Ancient-Future" - was "In Search of...," and I might change it back, because the original title was probably more accurate. Certainly the ancient-future was not found by myself in the intellectual realm, but was, more or less, intimated by the artifacts I later found... Tom Beddard's Faberge Fractals, and then those awesome bismuth crystals. One statement in the post was certainly legitimate though: "Ultimately, the Ancient-Future - and/or the necessary bridge between the two - is forged In the creative imagination..."

And, so it goes; approaching the ancient-future directly is almost impossible, and discussing it as if were some physical conundrum is equally as futile.

Poetry, then, is the the only effective way to go. Presently, there are no mathematical equations. So, my mission remains to ferret out examples whenever and wherever they're found, and recently, I came upon another treasure trove. Love, sweet love... Sherry Bellamy's lampwork beads!

Although I've been unsuccessful in contacting the artist - her blog and website seem to have gone dormant earlier this year, and while her tutorials are featured in her Etsy Shop, I'm unsure about the availability of her work - I still felt compelled to feature some glowing examples of Bellamy's art glass. Click on the images and, with your mind's eye, follow the glints, globules and organic glass folds deep inside the globes... Wander accordingly. ;-)

And, as we stand upon the cusp of another year - a metaphor for the ancient-future - here's hoping the "future" part is at least as bright as a lampwork bead.

Happy trails to all of us in the coming year...!

Art glass - Sherry Bellamy, found here

For more luminous examples of Bellamy's work, try this page with a 2005 interview, this 2012 blog post, or her website, Orca Beads, where the piece directly above was found.

In Search of An Ancient-Future

Lenticular Cloud, B.C. - Pandora's Box - digital - Dia Sobin, 2008

"It is never any definite experience which gives me pleasure, but always the quality of mystic adventurous expectancy itself - the indefiniteness which permits me to foster the momentary illusion that almost any vista of wonder and beauty might open up, or almost any law of time or space or matter or energy be marvelously defeated or reversed or modified or transcended….that sense of expansion, freedom, adventure, power, expectancy, symmetry, drama, beauty-absorption, surprise, and cosmic wonder (i.e. the illusory promise of a majestic revelation which shall gratify man’s ever-flaming, ever-tormenting curiosity about the outer voids and ultimate gulfs of entity)….the illusion of being poised on the edge of the infinite amidst a vast cosmic unfolding which might reveal almost anything..."

- H. P. Lovecraft, from a letter to James F. Morton, March 12, 1930, borrowed from this beautiful Teeming Brain essay: Autumn longing: H.P. Lovecraft by Matt Cardin

***

One morning, a few weeks ago, I awoke with a strange "realization"... which came in the form of an actual (albeit silent) declaration: I am an Ancient-Futurist.

Ruling out "divine-intervention" (and various psychological disorders), it must've been the punch-line of something I dreamt. But, that's dreaming for you; fragments remain in the conscious mind, but you've lost the big picture. Then again, in the following morning's dream, I learned the (Monty-Pythonesque) historical "fact" that Medieval swords and shields were cunningly fashioned from bread dough. It wasn't exactly a eureka moment, but, in the dream, it almost made sense.

But, back (or fast-forward) to the Ancient-Future, which, at least, is something to conjure with. In actuality, I've always been attracted to ancient/futuristic themes. The 2008 image (above) "Lenticular Cloud, B.C. - Pandora's Box" is an example, a literal translation of the meme. Carved in stone, Pandora perpetually clutches her box of plagues, while, overhead, an unidentifiable aerial object interacts with an ancient structure. It's fairly easy to decipher. But, that particular morning, my unconscious mind seemed to be referring to something less literal, a fertile abstraction from the subliminal realm that begged for a response.

It's not as if marrying the past with the future is all that weird.  In the timeless, non-local realm of the unconscious, the dead interact with the living, landscapes from one's childhood - those which no longer exist - arise revitalized, uncontaminated by any fate that eventually befell them, and, often, even oneself is clothed in a younger countenance, as if, somewhere along the way, the experience and effects of time passing have lost significance altogether.

Not even the conscious mind is utterly persuaded by the minutes ticking away on a clock. The minute our focus shifts from the time-centered televised-world to some personal place where we are emotionally, intellectually and/or energetically engaged, huge chunks of time can fall away leaving us mystified and perplexed. Where did that time go?

But, then again, what is time to begin with? According to the Realists, "Newtonian time" is a structure and a dimension in itself, in which events occur sequentially. According to the Presentists, only the present is real and neither the past nor the future exist. From the standpoint of Eternalism, time is also a dimension, married to space in a "block universe". But, according to this plan, although every moment is real and relative to the observer, time does not "pass"; it is a static vista, and neither the past not the future can be modified.

Practically speaking, the measurement of time is a gentlemen's agreement - its increments, as we know them, are fabrications. We experience the passing of time as growth and decay - the old and the new - now and then... but, through all of it, time has no substance, no physical structure, no meaning in itself. In that sense, it's both subjective and relative. We record it in our lives by the events that occur synchronistically. In that way, time is a series of events that coincide with a designated incremental structure.

Chronometry - the measurement of time - is the the time we're most familiar with as we change our calendars and check our watches. Periodic time covers the cycles of the moon and certain biological aspects of organisms. Sidereal time is measured by the stars. Judeo-Christian time is generally linear with a beginning and end.

Obviously, the Ancient-Future could not exist in a linear time frame. It has more of a chance within the philosophical concepts of the East where time is cyclical and quantic. Or, better still, couched in actual quantum descriptions of time - not to be confused with a Quantum Clock - specifically that of quantum entanglement. However, here we're referring to a particle's speed of light - that is, Planck time - in a theory that proposes time is continuous; or, utilizing  the Chronon, which is a proposed quantum unit of time relative to a particle's charge and mass.

from the Wired article: Quantum Entanglement Could Stretch Across Time

Ultimately, the Ancient-Future - and/or the necessary bridge between the two - is forged In the creative imagination: in the musings of science fiction writers - and the quote from H.P. Lovecraft above is key - the diagrams of sacred geometers, the organic landscapes of fractal artists, or by anyone harkening way, way back to some speculative mysterious source (while often using a timeless, fundamental set of tools, such as mathematics), to steal a glimpse of an equally as speculative and mysterious future. But, the key word here is mysterious; that unknown factor which occasionally pulls us out our televised-world-induced stupor to confront the sheer magnitude of our collective ignorance. There is something almost sacred about this sense of the mysterious (and our ignorance!), but, not in any officially religious sense. In other words: it can't be googled.

Which is not to say I didn't try googling Ancient-Futurist/Futurism... but, apart from some mysterious social networker, an electronic musical composition or two, and another scary Christian hybrid theology, I drew a blank. There is Retro-futurism, which is interesting but not quite the same. There are a few jewelry designers using Ancient-Future as a descriptive term (one or two whose designs resonate). There are theories in the speculative range, such as the paleocontact hypothesis (a guilty pleasure). Design-wise, there's Steam-punk and Cyber-punk, of course... which sometimes hints, stylistically, at what I'm trying to describe; as does Futurism, in a marginal sense.

And, yet, what was I really referring to by the term that fateful morning? "Days of Future Past"? Or, perhaps these "Days of Future Past" (which can be found here in its entirety). Histories of things to come? Archaeology in the inner-galactal realm? Say, a type of psychic archaeology, if you will. Or maybe something as tangible as the event photographed (via the Hubble) below, an actual collision of galaxies, 330 million light-years away (and a fate predicted for own galaxy in the far future...).

Stay tuned. Further explorations will ensue!

When galaxies collide... found here.

Note: It has recently come to my attention that, synchronistically, the ever-intrepid (and ever-prolific) Tam B, over at the previously mentioned blog, seems to be tackling a similar set of themes from a variety of perspectives. But, no, she and I are not comparing notes, and we are arriving at our destinations independently. Meanwhile, check out her latest post: a collection of some real-time ancient-futuristic dwellings!  

Next up: Artifacts from an Ancient-Future... Featuring the Work of Tom Beddard