Higher Ground - A Meme

Devi Vijaya Lakshmi - the Lakshmi of Victory - a colorfully painted statue - G - DS - 2024.

In the Hindu understanding of the cosmos, the female counterpart of Vishnu - Lakshmi - is the Devi, or goddess, of prosperity... "who is the guiding light for the world - who has obtained the sustained (continued, everlasting) glance (Grace) from Brahma."

Also: "She is often depicted sitting upon a lotus and adorned with lotus at her hands and feet. Many of her names, Padmā, Kamalā, Ambujā, refer to the lotus. The lotus has powerful symbolism in Hinduism. While its roots are in the mud, its stalk rises clearly through the murky water, with its petals blossoming above, untouched by the mud. It is a symbol of rising above the material world through divinity, of being good in the midst of negative influences."

You will note how precisely the figure of the Devi fits within the Golden Egg I transposed over it. I have seen this phi configuration often in depictions of Hindu goddesses, reminding us that the pentagonal golden spiral is very prominent in ancient Near & Middle Eastern art. See my Paisley post.

Lakshmi was first introduced on this blog in this post. (Shyamala Gopalan didn't name her daughter Kamala Devi for nothing. She saw the future.)

(For more images of this beautiful Devi, try here.)

***

prosperous (adj.)

synonyms: thriving, doing well, fortunate, successful, lucky, rich, vigorous, roaring, strong, productive, flourishing, booming, opulent, golden...

antonyms: depressed, poor.

- Via Google/Oxford Languages. Prosperous is a word few of us can really wrap our heads around. Why is this?

I see them every day now in southwestern Albuquerque... more of them, and more frequently: the misfortunate nomads - the darker side of the American dream - wheeling their life's belongings in shopping carts down the vacant streets with no destination... no protection, no peace. They appear to be American refugees of every description. While I was never one of them, I, too, was homeless - and, theoretically, still am - but the emergence of the new Traveler or Nomad and the plight of the disenfranchised is not a recent development. I began living in my car the year following Trump's inauguration. And, then, came the Black Hole - the Pandemic. We all know the rest.

It is true: we - none of us - can "go back"; "back" no longer exists as we once knew it.

(Continued below the jump...)

A Virtual "Can of Worms"

Worm's Last Memory - digital - 2009, DS. Geometry: 2022, DS.

Admittedly, Grace Jones is a tough act to follow... but, what must be done, must be done.

It seems I have made an unwelcome discovery and this is it: yes, one can embed a golden spiral in a visual image without even realizing it... and I have proof!

The proof amounts to golden spirals found in 5 of my own images - 3 of them executed prior to 2010 and the other two created in 2015, and 2016. There's only one problem: I wasn't introduced to the pentagonal golden spiral until March of 2021!

Inset left and right (below), from 2016, is the side panel of the music box with 2 potential GTSs.

Question: Why is it that a golden (pentagonal) spiral will discreetly appear in an image when  - at the time it was created - the artist had no conscious knowledge of the particular spiral involved? Is our design sense somehow wired to the melody of the golden ratio? Is this why the ratio was referred to as the "divine" - in that it is subliminally embedded in our consciousness?

Finding a golden spiral is not exactly the same as creating one, but the twain do meet somewhere within the process. And, this might be a factor. In the case of finding a golden ratio in ones own work, while it allows an artist to remember more of the actual creative process, it also brings something else to the table, a sense of the mysterious; a connectedness. This is, at once, satisfying... but, ultimately, a bit spooky. Is it a muse thing? An encrypted message...?  If so, from what?... or who? 

I keep thinking of it as a kind of organic thing.. a more sentient form of Sacred Geometry; the sub rosa beneath the sub rosa... like a maze of underground catacombs inhabited by ghosts. Then again, maybe the spiral is just a design artifact, making its appearance wherever a golden triangle appears.

At the same time, well, what new madness is this? In other words, is it anything but a strangely human (and yet, inhuman) construct which is essentially of the imaginal realm?

And, how does this reflect on all the spirals I've been finding in other artist's work?

Yes, well, I am unable to answer any of these questions, but have posted all five images in which the GTS was found (3 are below the jump). As for the worm .jpg (above), I found it was imperative to replace the space of my own crop (!) to accommodate the spiral! The image isn't working perfectly within the spiral but it's very, very close... and it is working with the golden triangle.

Artistic Empowerment in a Dark Age

Hello again. Just in case you thought I died, I thought it might be a good idea to drop by and put in an appearance.

Below is something I was inspired to write yesterday. It felt like it came out the blue but, when I got to thinking about it, I realized that what I'd done was list some of the underlying elements of empowerment I'd discovered during the course of researching and writing about other artists. (Re: the empowerment posts of which 2 are yet-to-come). (Yes, you heard right: the initial "last" empowerment post has propagated into 2...)(And, yes, I'm living in a metropolis of rabbit-holes!)

Anyway, the list is not gender-specific. Also, although I'm not sure how much of it will hold up in the coming months, there's a chance I'll be referring to it again. Or scrapping it altogether.

Incidentally, the small oil paintings appearing here were painted early in my artistic herstory and were precursors to the images found here. I wish I had access to a similar sort of list then!

______________________________________

10 Strategies for Survival as an Artist

I. Don't feel as if you must always "go it alone." Join a group, form a collective. There is safety and strength in numbers. Even if you must initially isolate yourself always keep in mind that there are individuals like yourself who need to express themselves in similar ways. Keep an eye out for them. You may need help that only they can provide... and vice versa. Create a Movement; it draws attention. While categorization is a superficial goal, having a general location - politically, stylistically or philosophically - might work to your advantage.

2. When in doubt, build larger. The meek do not inherit the earth. If you believe in what you are doing then make a bold statement. It is a statement which will become a part of the historical and herstorical records. Like the Egyptian pyramids, it will last indisputabley; it will be impossible to overlook or ignore.

3. Do something unexpected. Surprise yourself. Don't be afraid to evolve. Make your work a playground... a laboratory.

4. Express yourself in several dimensions. Likewise, find your inspiration in several more; many dimensions of experience are layered within the psyche. An artist needs to explore these hidden dimensions... to go where few humans have gone before. In a sense it is an artist's job, his or her truest vocation. We are here to explore the hidden, the forgotten, the damned, the invisible... the places no one looks for truth... the places it hides.

5. Find support... whether it's in the form of a mentor, a patron, a benefactor, a partner or a true friend. Know your allies. Realize that fate may not always come to your rescue, but that your inner self will champion you at all times. Your true fortitude, your salvation, lies within. Meanwhile, you may have to take on laborious jobs for physical survival...  or utilize commercial ways to finance larger projects, but never let a source of income be your only guide and never let the dictates of society weaken your resolve. Demand the society of angels.

6. Celebrate your physical legacy; embrace your genetic heritage: the people and places you originated from. And, then, rise above them. You are a unique expression in a continuum. You are a new explication in a morphic field.  You are an alchemical point in which all symmetries are unbound and a crucible in which all impossibilities are born. Through you new landscapes emerge and dreams achieve substance.

7. Celebrate yourself. It's uplifting to expand your expression to include your appearance. Be a child dressing up in a mirror. But don't, for any reason, let current trends or societal prejudices define your choices... specifically those dealing with weight, gender, chronological age, and skin color. Gender profiling is passé. Age profiling is society's way of creating new landfills. Skin color is only relevant here when choosing a complimentary shade of accessory. Defy convention. Have fun. Pretend you have just met yourself for the first time.

8. Find your inner, mysterious "other half" who compliments and completes you. Jung referred to this entity as the animus - a woman's inner man - and the anima, a man's inner woman. But, this wasn't merely psychobabble; the anima and animus exist. And, for an artist, acknowledging and accepting this dual-gender aspect in their psyches is crucial to initiate, enrich and perpetuate all creative acts. The greatest, most effective art is not sexist in a derogatory way; your inner opposite enables you to rise above sexism. Moreover, It will enable you to express your humanity as a whole person without recourse to superficial displays of worn-out gender tropes.

9. Find joy in your creations. This is the truest, most heroic subversion of all the falseness you have been taught and indoctrinated to believe. You are not here to suffer. You are here to overcome suffering. Let your muse show you the way. Illustrate what you've learned. Sing, if only to yourself. Write poetry (it renews the spirit). Dance wherever it is not allowed.

10. Set all winged creatures free.

Qualifying Feminism: Empowerment and the Arts (Part I)

Gal Gadot in her 2017 film role as Wonder Woman.

"But it was within this busy, unorthodox household, where (William Moulton) Marston upheld a "hodgepodge of Aquarianism and psychology and feminism," that Wonder Woman began to take shape. Marston proudly claimed that his most famous creation was meant to be "psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who ... should rule the world." The superhero made her debut in December 1941, the same month the United States entered World War II. With her mandate to fight "evil, intolerance, destruction, injustice, suffering, and even sorrow, on behalf of democracy, freedom, justice, and equal rights for women," Wonder Woman not only battles Nazis but also aids (in the guise of her alter ego, Diana Prince) female department-store workers on strike over meager wages."

- Melissa Anderson from her Newsday book review of The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore. Inset left is a Wonder Woman comic book panel (possibly from the 1970s) featuring an explosive rant which begins: "Men! It was you who did this, with your weapons and your war, and your mad need for confrontation..."

"This perception shifted over the years, however, as demonstrated in December 2016 when the United Nations decided to drop the title of "honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls" which it had given to the comic book character Wonder Woman a few months prior, in a ceremony attended by the actors who had portrayed her (Lynda Carter and Gal Gadot). The title was eliminated in response to a petition signed by 44,000 people which argued that Wonder Woman undermines female empowerment due to her costume, described as a "shimmery, thigh-baring bodysuit with an American flag motif and knee-high boots". The petition stated that "it is alarming that the United Nations would consider using a character with an overtly sexualised image at a time when the headline news in United States and the world is the objectification of women and girls"...

The debate continued with the release of Jenkins' 2017 film, Wonder Woman, which according to the BBC had "some thinking it's too feminist and others thinking it's not feminist enough". Kyle Killian found an inherent contradiction in the construction of Wonder Woman as "a warrior" whom, she states, is also highly sexualized. Killian thus suggests that these elements "should not be the focus of a kickass heroine—her beauty, bone structure, and sexiness—if she is to be a feminist icon..."

- Excerpt from the Wiki entry for Wonder Woman, the 2017 film directed by Patty Jenkins. Inset right, Wonder Woman and her controversial costume.

"Spartan women, of the citizenry class, enjoyed a status, power, and respect that was unknown in the rest of the classical world. The higher status of females in Spartan society started at birth; unlike Athens, Spartan girls were fed the same food as their brothers. Nor were they confined to their father's house and prevented from exercising or getting fresh air as in Athens, but exercised and even competed in sports. Most important, rather than being married off at the age of 12 or 13, Spartan law forbade the marriage of a girl until she was in her late teens or early 20s. The reasons for delaying marriage were to ensure the birth of healthy children, but the effect was to spare Spartan women the hazards and lasting health damage associated with pregnancy among adolescents. Spartan women, better fed from childhood and fit from exercise, stood a far better chance of reaching old age than their sisters in other Greek cities, where the median age for death was 34.6 years or roughly 10 years below that of men."

- Excerpt from the Wiki entry for the ancient Greek city of  Sparta. Note that, in the ancient world, the life span of a woman was shorter than that of her male counterpart. Inset left is a bust of Helen (Helénē) of Troy (or Sparta) by the artist Antonio Canova. She was that famous swan daughter of (Spartan) Leda and the god, Zeus.

"Girls with guns, big guns - what fun! Even the most pacifistic woman - and really, I am - experiences a certain vicarious release when, with a gun in each hand, a superwoman blows away a flock of her opponents, without so much as blinking her eyes. Hell, I have a hard time swatting a fly, but when I watch Kate Beckensale blast her way through a bevy of creeps, I get to share a certain heady sense of power...

So, you go Kate, and Charlize, and Carrie-Anne... and you go Milla, and Sigourney, and anybody I may have left out. There are no underdogs quite so "under" as women, so, when you shine, all of our repressed warrior instincts finally get to kick some ass!"

- Excerpt from my (2011) PMB post "The New Superheroines - Girls With Guns." Inset right is
Kate Beckinsale as the Vampire (and Death Dealer), Selene.

***

From 1987.

The word "superheroine" isn't even an official word according to my computer system's 2009 dictionary... (and maybe it isn't now, either, judging by the way it's being underlined in red as I write this post). But, considering that the comic book character, Wonder Woman, made her debut over 70 years ago (in December of 1941), and noting, too, the plethora of female warrior-types who've invigorated the film, television and comic book industries since that time, well, one would think the word would have surfaced in the English language by now.

But, as it happens, the official world transforms very, very slowly... and, in certain areas of the globe, almost not at all; and in regards to the subordination of the female gender, well, despite several "waves" of feminists - and thousands upon thousands of years spent pushing the world's population out of their (collective) wombs - women are still essentially the underdogs. The odd thing is, even when a woman is the boldest, most attractive, most ingenious person she can be, chances are she still fears she is never quite good enough and her accomplishments are trivial, often driving her to overcompensate for a deficiency she never really had. Inwardly, regardless of her accomplishments, she still feels as if she's treading water, or as if some undefinable force continues to hold her back or drag her down. This is not a delusion. Metaphorically, society - under the spell of a pervasive patriarchal zeitgeist - clipped her wings many ages ago. And this legacy - this insidious mutation - was genetically* passed down to her in such a way, that she needs no outside force to enslave her - the trappings of her prison exist at all times embedded within her own psychology.

So, the question becomes: how can a maimed bird fly?

Eye of Newt

Still Life with a Salamander - digital - 2005, 2016

"Eye of newt, and toe of frog,

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing,--

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."

- From Macbeth, (Act 4, Scene 1), William Shakespeare.

"The occult world is the hidden world. But what is it hidden from? Well, the occultists themselves usually insist that the world with which they themselves are familiar is hidden from ordinary vision. Most occultists will say that, while it is quite possible for anyone to see this hidden realm, special preparation is usually needed. The majority of people are quite content to pass their lives immersed in the ordinary world of time and space, oblivious to the fact that it is a world interpenetrated by other worlds in which there is a different time and a different space.

The whole range of occult symbols which have come down to us from the remote past is concerned with giving us information about the nature of this different time and space which is hidden from ordinary sight. How is it possible for a hidden world, or an invisible realm, to be represented in ordinary pictures? Imagine, for example, something we have already mentioned, such as the flames which are used to denote the spiritual realm. When an ordinary person looks at a fire, he sees flames leaping upwards. He probably knows that the flames are fed by oxygen from the air, and that what he is seeing is an incandescent gas. Now, when an occultist or an initiate looks with especially sensitised eyes towards the flames of a fire, he does not see only incandescent gases. He sees a sort of life force which is directly linked with the power of the Sun; he also sees that the fire is animated (like all earthly things) by a special soul-being. Such a soul-being is called by modern occultists a ‘salamander’."

- Quote by Fred Gettings from his Secret Symbolism in Occult Art (1987), found in the online article Salamander as soul-being and hieroglyph of fire.

***

I'm not really officially back to normal posting yet, and I'm not sure when I will be. I'm anxious to get back to the Music Box series before I lose the thread altogether but circumstances dictate that - like it or not (and I don't) - I have to put a great deal more effort into the nuts and bolts (meat-space) side of my existence. It's a survival thing. But, the real question which has always plagued me has come around once again: how does one survive as a corporeal being, and intellectual being, an emotional being and a spiritual being in the phenomenal world of today? One gets the impression that for "most people" - those "ordinary" folks in Gettings' quote (above) - integrating these four modes of existence is not an issue because most are unaware of any existence outside of the corporeal realm. Which may be true, but, I don't believe there are any "ordinary" people.

That being said, when it comes to striking a balance between the four modes of existence, some of us are more flawed than others. In a less complicated world, of course - the superficial world we find on television... glued together by artifice, hype, rhetoric, and generated by meaningless surveys, erroneous statistics, branding and the "common denominator" - any physical or emotional flaw can be fixed by a good diet, a physician, the right variety of potion or powder, or a good pair of running shoes. And, if all of that fails, there's always a dependable life insurance plan. But, in the real world, keeping heart, mind, body and soul functioning together in any sort of optimal way is another story and it rarely ends happily. And, for the artist, the "occultist," the solitary outsider, the unhappy ending scenario is a palpable thing looming cloud-like over the horizon every single day. Poverty is the most imminent threat, but the fear of madness is never far behind...

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... 

Creatura - Songs From the Oyster Bed

Oysters on a desk-top - Digital Photo - 2014, DS

"The co-evolutionary story between rocks and life began 4 billion years or so ago, when the planet had only rocks, air and oceans to work with. The origins researchers that followed Miller and Urey’s heady success soon realised that air and oceans aren’t enough to create life, no matter how lightning-filled the sky. Only with the addition of carefully selected minerals will simple, nonliving biomolecules concentrate and combine in complex biologically useful ways.

Life arose from minerals; then minerals arose from life. The geosphere and biosphere have become complexly intertwined, with numerous feedback loops driving myriad critical natural processes in ways that are only now coming into focus."

- from an 2014 article by Robert Hazen, found at Aeon magazine.



"Mr. Gerard further states: 'Just before crossing the boundary of Ludak into Bussalier, I was exceedingly gratified by the discovery of a bed of fossil oysters, clinging to a rock as if they had been alive.'

In whatever point of view we are to consider the subject, it is sublime to think of organic remains lying at such an extraordinary altitude, and of vast cliffs of rocks formed out of them, frowning over the illimitable and desolate waters, where oceans once rolled."

- from Shells on the Snowy Mountains of Tibet, Asiatic Register,  found here.



"... the great power and human destinies are couched in the virtues of Stones and Herbs. But to know from whence these come, a higher speculation is required. Alexander the peripatetic, not going any further than his senses and qualities, is of the opinion that these proceed from Elements, and their qualities, which haply might be supposed to be true, if those were of the same species; but many of the operations of the Stones agree neither in genere nor specie. Therefore Plato and his scholars attribute these virtues to Ideas, the formers of things. But Avicen reduceth these kinds of operations to Intelligence, Hermes to the Stars, Albertus to the specifical forms of things.

...Now consequently we must discourse of Intelligences, spirits and Angels. An Intelligence is an intelligible substance, free from all gross and putrifying mass of a body, immortall, insensible, assisting all, having Influence over all; and the nature of all intelligences, spirits and Angels is the same. But I call Angels here, not those whom we usually call Devils, but spirits so called from the propriety of the word, as it were, knowing, understanding and wise."

- from De occulta philosophia libri tres (Three Books Concerning Occult Philosophy), 1530s, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

As readers of this blog know, the moment summer arrives, one can often find a peculiar, solitary woman (me) roaming the sandbars on the Connecticut shoreline; every now and then bending down to pick up an object or two... possibly even talking to herself (or the objects) before placing them back down, or, resuming her search (if that's what it is), possibly still holding one prized object (carefully) in her sweaty little paw.

There are no "ordinary" objects at the shore... and some, like the one above (shown from various angles - click to enlarge) are to be celebrated. When I first found these three shells cemented* to a fragment of rock, however, I wasn't even sure what I'd found. Were they some form of barnacle? Had a human glued some shells onto a rock in such a pretty array?

Creatura - The Sentient Seaweed (the Extended Version)

Live scan of an unidentified seaweed - 2014, DS
Note: This scan is a product of a new flatbed scanner... which, apparently had difficulties
reading the black background, hence the weird color artifacts (unfortunately intensified online).
I've tried - and failed - to correct it. Sorry.

(click to enlarge)

creature |ˈkrē ch ər|
noun
an animal, as distinct from a human being : night sounds of birds and other creatures.
• an animal or person : as fellow creatures on this planet, animals deserve respect.
• a fictional or imaginary being, typically a frightening one : a creature from outer space.
• archaic anything living or existing : dress, jewels, and other transitory creatures.
• a person of a specified kind, typically one viewed with pity, contempt, or desire : you heartless creature!
• a person or organization considered to be under the complete control of another : the village teacher was expected to be the creature of his employer.

ORIGIN Middle English (in the sense [something created] ): via Old French from late Latin creatura, from the verb creare (see create).



"In the philosophy of consciousness, sentience can refer to the ability of any entity to have subjective perceptual experiences, or as some philosophers refer to them, "qualia". This is distinct from other aspects of the mind and consciousness, such as creativity, intelligence, sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality (the ability to have thoughts "about" something). Sentience is a minimalistic way of defining consciousness, which is otherwise commonly used to collectively describe sentience plus other characteristics of the mind.

Some philosophers, notably Colin McGinn, believe that sentience will never be understood, a position known as "new mysterianism". They do not deny that most other aspects of consciousness are subject to scientific investigation but they argue that subjective experiences will never be explained; i.e., sentience is the only aspect of consciousness that can't be explained. Other philosophers (such as Daniel Dennett) disagree, arguing that all aspects of consciousness will eventually be explained by science."

- Excerpt from the Wiki entry on sentience.

***

The summer solstice (the pagan holiday of Litha) approaches, and with it, my inevitable trips to the shore. Sometimes there's an agenda; mostly there isn't. But, when the ocean calls, it never needs to leave a message; I just get in my car - sans towels and sunblock lotion... sans beach blankets, beach balls,  beverage coolers and lounge chairs. I'm there for meditative purposes, investigative purposes, or, more generally, no purpose at all. The ocean calls, and that's enough.

Last week, however, there was a method to my madness as I plodded along the sandbars. My mission was to gather bits of seaweed for an image I was trying to rework and, hopefully, finish. Normally sea plants hold no interest for me, but, for the image, I needed the seaweed's specific organic contours...

The Language of the Birds (& the Memory of Sound): Automatism

Wings of Light - oil on canvas - 1984, Roberto Matta

"Fulcanelli's main point, the key to unraveling the larger mystery of alchemy and the cathedrals, lies in an understanding of what he calls the "phonetic law" of the "spoken cabala," or the "Language of the Birds."

"What unsuspected marvels we should find, if we knew how to dissect words, to strip them of their barks and liberate the spirit, the divine light, which is within," Fulcanelli writes. He claims that in our day this is the natural language of the outsiders, the outlaws and heretics at the fringes of society.

It was also the "green language" of the Freemasons ("All the Initiates expressed themselves in cant," Fulcanelli reminds us) who built the art gothique of the cathedrals. Ultimately the "art cot," or the "art of light," is derived from the Language of the Birds, which seems to be a sort of Ur-language taught by both Jesus and the ancients. It is also mentioned in the Sufi text, entitled "The Conference of the Birds," by Attar the Chemist."

- excerpt from Reading the Green Language of Light  by Vincent Bridges

"Whilst some artists emphasised automatism’s role in discovering hidden aspects of the artist’s psyche, others, such as Roberto Matta, valued it as a means for uncovering hidden aspects of objects and for the exploration of what lies beyond the confines of the visible world. Its optical image is just one aspect of the existence of an object. Galaxies, crystals and living matter go through processes of creation, existence and destruction. They exist in time, change with the passage of time and can be observed from multiple perspectives. Conventionally, however, they are only depicted at a fixed point in their history, from a single point in space and, inevitably, with a palette limited to colours which reflect light of a visible wavelength.

To his attempts to use automatism to give form to those things which cannot be seen except as an inner vision, Matta gave the name ‘psychological morphology’, a phrase Colquhoun used to describe her paintings of the 1940s.  For the painters involved in this theorising – primarily Matta, Esteban Frances and Gordon Onslow-Ford – the possibilities were, literally, endless; ‘It is a Hell-Paradise where all is possible’ wrote Onslow-Ford. He continued; ‘The details of the farthest star can be as apparent as those of your hand.  Objects can be extended in time so that the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly can be observed at a glance."

- excerpt from Richard Shillitoe's excellent online article: Occult Surrealist: Ithell Colquhoun and automatism

"We are still living under the rule of logic, that, of course, is what I am driving at. But in our day, logical procedures are only applicable in solving problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism still in fashion only allows us to consider facts directly related to our own experience. The aims of logic, in contrast, escape us. Pointless to add that our very experience finds itself limited. It paces about in a cage from which it is more and more difficult to free it. It leans, it too, on immediate utility, and is guarded by common sense. Under the flag of civilisation, accompanied by the pretext of progress, we have managed to banish from the spirit everything that might rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, fancy, forbidding any kind of research into the truth which does not conform to accepted practice. It was by pure chance, it seems, that a part of our mental world, and to my mind the most important, with which we pretended to be no longer concerned, was recently brought back to light."

- excerpt from Andre Breton's 1924 Surrealist Manifesto

***

M'onde - oil on canvas - 1989, Roberto Matta

(Continuing where I left off), have you ever come across a particular scene (via a movie or some other form of entertainment)... which goes something like this: a man is walking down a city street shouting oaths to an invisible entity, and the passersby think he's mad... deranged,* but, in reality, the invisible entity actually exists - the man really is communicating with someone or something - and the passersby are merely missing the overall picture (?). If it isn't already, it ought to be the standard metaphor for all creatures "paranormal". Ghosts, aliens, fairies, Yeti, whatever. Some of us see them, some of us don't. The ones who do are immediately labeled delusional... while the ones who don't - for the most part - file their nails and sit complacently on their sofas, in the safety of a bedroom or living room or media room, watching bogus "reality" shows on whatever pixelated screens they possess. But, meanwhile, there's an elephant in that room. Or, maybe a bird. A wild bird which has flown into the room and has begun plummeting against the walls in panic and desperation. And, because no one knows quite what to do - and the program is over anyway - they wander into another room and close the door.

End of metaphor.

Artists, on the other hand, stay in that room... with the elephant... with the bird... with no pixelated screens to distract them. That is, unless they're a certain breed of digital artist, but, at this point, the screen is blank, apart from maybe a shadow of a large ear, or dim trails from a flapping wing, or the bright glints of light on a splintered beak. Images from the unconscious are hard to pin down. They're anomalies in a different language... poetry in unspoken words. You might say, (re: quote above) an unspoken cabala, the true language of the birds... and, invisible birds, at that.