Unurthed

Two paintings by Aboriginal artists, collected in Wally Caruana’s Aboriginal Art.

Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson, Paddy Japaljarri Sims, and Larry Jungarrayi Spencer, Yanjilypiri Jukurrpa (Star Dreaming), 1985 (f109).

“The Australian deserts appears empty and inhospitable to those who do not know them, but to the Aboriginal groups who inhabit these areas, the lands created by their ancestors and infused with their powers are places rich in spiritual meaning and physical sustenance.

“Geographically, the desert includes mountain ranges and spectacular rock-formations, grassy plains, strands and eucalypt and mulga trees, lakes, salt pans, sandhills, and stretches of stony country occasionally broken by seasonal watercourses and rivers and punctuated by rare permanent rockholes, springs, waterholes and soakages… Across this landscape spreads a web of ancestral paths travelled by the supernatural beings on their epic journeys of creation in the Jukurrpa or Dreaming, linking the topography firmly to the social order of the people” (p97).

“The basic elements of the pictorial art are limited in number but broad in meaning… Characteristic of the range of conventional designs and icons are those denoting place or site, and those indicating paths or movement. Concentric circles may denote a site, a camp, a waterhole or a fire. In ceremony, the concentric circle provides the means for the ancestral power which lies within the earth to surface and go back into the ground. Meandering and straight lines may indicate lightening or water courses, or they may describe the paths of ancestors and supernatural beings. Tracks of animals and humans are also part of the lexicon of desert imagery. U-shapes usually represent settled people or breasts, while arcs may be boomerangs or wind-breaks, and short straight lines or bars are often spears and digging sticks. Fields of dots can indicate sparks, fire, burnt ground, smoke, clouds, rain, and other phenomena.

“The interpretations of these designs are multiple and simultaneous, and depend on the viewer’s ritual knowledge of a site and the associated Dreaming. The meanings are elaborated and enhanced by the various combinations or juxtapositions of designs in the paintings, and also by the social and cultural contexts within which they operate — whether for ceremony or public domain, for instance. The combinations of designs allow for endless depth of meaning, and artists in decribing their work distinguish between those meanings that are indented for public revelations and those which are not, and provide the appropriate level of interpretation” (p98-99).

Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri, Bandicoot Dreaming, 1991 (f98).

“It is by the acquisition of knowledge, not material possessions, that one attains status in Aboriginal culture. Art is an expression of knowledge, and hence a statement of authority. Through the use of ancestrally inherited designs, artists assert their identity, and their rights and responsibilities. They also define the relationships between individuals and groups, and affirm their connections to the land and the Dreaming” (p14-15).

“As a statement of authority, the aesthetic in art is often articulated in terms of ritual knowledge. Through art, individuals express their authority and knowledge of a subject, the land and the Dreaming, and artists will use their authority to introduce change and innovation” (p16).

“In ritual, paintings… are not intended to be static images requiring studied contemplation. Rather, since designs embody the power of supernatural beings, they are intended to be sensed more than viewed” (p59-60).

An illustration of a Pharaonic tableau by Lucie Lamy from R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz’s Symbol and the Symbolic (also see previous posts).

Seth, Master of the South, and Horus, Master of the North, the perpetual antagonists. Both of their heads emerge from a single body that stands on two horizontal bows evoking the energy potential that can make manifest the two inverse forces through the stimulation of the passage of Re (fig3).

Writes Schwaller de Lubicz, “Every circle, as a circular movement, has a center. This center controls this continuous and regular curve, which is closed; it is attractive, just as the circumference is repellent (centrifugal). This center is an abstract power which rules the phenomenon of circular movement. Two centers make an elliptical (or assimilated) movement if the curve is closed. If the curve is not closed but is superimposed, the center beomes a line or figure, horizontal for a spiral, vertical for a helicoidal curve, etc.

“The center controls; it is the will of the figure. Three axes of equal length, intersecting at 90°, are the will of the cube. The form of movement and the form of the Euclidian volume are in the center and in its radiation.

“I say that the will of a rotating sphere is the magnetic axis, and its equator is the centrifugal electrical effect. On the other hand, every magnetic effect is contradicting will, which produces the dilating, equatorial electrical effect. Inversely, every circlular electrical current provokes the magnetic axial effect. Will is esoteric; effect is exoteric.

“But where, then, is the will of the ‘container,’ the non-Euclidean volume?

“Its will is the seed, that is, the specification of the ‘contents,’ hence a genesis — that is, Time, for Time is none other than genesis. Genesis appears to us as Time.

“Now, all will of movement and of form is a specification of Energy. Will is thus identified with the seed, as the specifier, and, as genesis, appears as Time or duration.

“The seed ordains the volume, that is, Space; the genesis of this Space ordains Time. Will is what Lao-Tzu calls ‘the empty hub of the wheel.’

“The Absolute Will of the Origin includes all specifications.

“Everything that is naturally specified is a symbol and the expression of a will, hence of a specifying seed of non-objectifiable Energy: the Container, the non-polarized Sprit-substance. The specifying Will, the ‘Fire’ of the seed, was called the ‘odor’ by ancient Egyptians — the ‘odor’ of the Neter, (that is, in an esoteric sense, that which is emanated by the Neter like an ejaculated seed).

“The contained will must always be sought in the symbol, when the symbol is selected for an esoteric teaching. The character of this Will is that which will always compel Spirit — non-polarized Energy — to define itself in Time and Space, hence in the form of the symbol. This is the ‘magical’ meaning of the symbol. With regard to Spirit, this ‘magic’ operates like the Platonic Idea, just as rhythm acts on our will of movement; we obey despite and at odds with everything, even when we do not give in” (p69-70).

One more Qadri, this from his collection of paintings and poems, THE DOT and the dots.

Invocation -76. Click for larger version.

Writes Qadri:

“to find
some meaning in life
is to give one to it
and find,
that it is meaningless.”

Speaking again of shocks, two ink & dye works by tantric artist Sohan Qadri, cataloged in Seeker: The Art of Sohan Qadri. 

Pranayama, 2002, p101. Click for larger version.

Comments Donald Kuspit, “The ecstatic moment of full consciousness of the metaphysical truth about existence is a moment of aesthetic shock: concretizing the metaphysical truth [of the doctrine of Sunyata], Qadri’s icons give us an aesthetic shock. ‘The Pali word samvega is often used to denote the shock or wonder that may be felt when the perception of a work of art becomes a serious experience,’ Ananda Coomaraswamy writes. The perception of a work of art becomes a serious experience when it stirs ‘the will or mind’ to ‘consideration of the Eight Emotional Themes (birth, old age, sickness, death, and suffering arising in four other ways),’ and, ‘in the resulting state of distress, then gladdens it by the recollection of the Buddha, the Eternal Law… when it is in need of such gladdening’. Thus meditation on Qadri’s icons is therapeutic. The tensions in them — between contrasting colors, lines, and rhythms as well as light and dark — evoke our inner conflicts and distress even as their aesthetic resolution gladdens us, finally raising our spirits” (p14).

Purusha, 1999, p82. Click for larger version.

“Thus aesthetic shock is two-sided: it subverts ordinary consciousness by exposing the conflicts hidden by it even as it signals the extraordinary consciousness that resolves them. Qadri’s icons are as divided against themselves — fault lines run through some of them — as they are unified. They shock us into awareness of the eternal law stated in the doctrine of Sunyata. Meditation is not some mindless act of egoistic communion with oneself, but upsets one’s sense of selfhood, however, ultimately calming and enlightening by reason of its revelation of the eternal law. But the way to Buddha-like calm is through aesthetic delight, as Qadri’s icons show” (p14-15).

Speaking of shocks, a diagram by P.D. Ouspensky from his 1949 In Search of the Miraculous.

Ouspensky quotes G., “‘The results of the influences whose source lies outside life [i.e., esoteric influences] collect together within him, he remembers them together, feels them together. They begin to form within him a certain whole. He does not give a clear account to himself as to what, how, and why, or if he does give an account to himself, then he explains it wrongly. But the point is not in this, but in the fact that the results of these influences collect together within him and after a certain time they form within him a kind of magnetic center, which begins to attract to itself kindred influences and in this manner it grows. If the magnetic center receives sufficient nourishment, and if there is no strong resistance on the part of the other sides of a man’s personality which are the result of influences created in life [i.e., nation, climate, family, education, wealth, customs, etc.], the magnetic center begins to influence a man’s orientation, obliging him to turn round and even to move in a certain direction. When the magnetic center attains sufficient force and development, a man already understands the idea of the way and he begins to look for the way. The search for the way may take many years and lead to nothing. This depends upon conditions, upon circumstances, upon the power of the magnetic center, upon the power and the direction of inner tendencies which are not concerned with this search and which may divert a man at the very moment when the possibility of finding the way appears’” (p200).

“‘If the magnetic center works rightly and if a man really searches, or even if he does not search actively yet feels rightly, he may meet another man who knows the way and who is connected directly or through other people with a center existing outside the law of accident, from which proceed the ideas which created the magnetic center’” (p200-201).

Ouspensky’s embodiment and, below, its legend (p204).

A sandpainting by Miguelito from Navajo Medicine Man Sandpaintings (originally published in 1939).

The Shock Painting, plate XXI. Click for larger version.

“Occassionally when a very complete [Fire Dance] ceremony has been agreed upon, the rite of the Shock-caused-by-bear is given. Since Holy Man [who represents man's contacts between the earth and sky powers] was learning everything, it was performed for him on the fifth day [of a nine-day ceremony]. The painting was made in sand and the patient sat on it. Then one person dressed as a bear and one impersonating Holy Man rushed in [to the hogan] and frightened the patient into a fainting fit. The chanter and all concerned then proceeded to restore the afflicted, after which he would no longer fear anything natural or supernatural.

“The four white tracks leading to the painting signify the tracks of white cornmeal made by Changing Woman [god-mother of man] when Holy Man returned from the Sun’s House [god-father of man]. The base of the painting is a rainbow [a protective measure of Water Sprinkler]. The tracks on the black background are bear tracks. The Big Black Snake… has the markings described for Big Snakes: rectangular figure for snake’s house, chevron for deerhoof or game, curved lines for moon phases… The blue on the neck of the snake represents earthy things and people; the red bands, the breath or life. The spruce twigs around the snake stand for the Dark-circle-of-branches of the Fire Dance” (p66).

A diagram of the Laws of Magic, appearing in Isaac Bonewits’s Real Magic (1971).

“A qualitative diagram showing [the Laws] primary interrelationships”. Click for larger version.

Another scroll reproduced in Ethiopian Magic Scrolls.

“This image is recognizably a development of the eight-pointed star [c.f. previous post]. Here the image tends towards formal perfection. A double movement animates it: expansion following the four vertical and horizontal arms and the angel’s heads, and penetration following the four diagonal points. We have noted… that the former are the directions of the Cross (i.e., of a body with outstretched arms), and the latter direction of the penetrating gaze. The black lobate curve articulates this double movement here, so that it appears to begin from a circular form. The eyes of the central face are placed on the transversal axis. If we consider the genesis of this picture through related motifs, we will note that what have become here the radiating points of the central face were originally part of the angel’s clothing. They have been separated from the collar and shifted toward the center, for purely formal reasons.

“The Virgin’s Prayer at Bartos says: ‘Come, you four angels who hold up the four corners of the world and who are called Fertiyal, Ferfay, Fumael and Fananyal’. The winged faces are the angels of the four directions. Who are they guarding? The hidden face of the divine? The owner of the scroll? Satan in prison? All of these explanations are current among dabtaras who make such pictures” (p118).

Speaking of eyes and wings, a talismanic scroll presented in Mercier’s 1979 Ethiopian Magic Scrolls.

“The central design, a face within an eight-pointed star, is the most common and most characteristic motif in Ethiopian scrolls. The face is known as gätsä säb’e (‘face of a person’). It is the face connected with the prayer that goes with the talisman, and its presence is necessary for the effectiveness of the scroll. Thus defined, the face has a sort of ‘local’ identity. A generic meaning can also be attributed to it, interpretable with help of the accompanying prayer: the face of God, an angel, a demon, a man, and so on.

“The eight points indicate the four directions of the talisman’s protective power: ‘Whoever comes from the East, etc…’. In relation to the face in the center, they are luminous radiance or the wings that enable it to move in all directions. One dabtara has said that each of the eight wings is an angel serving the central face. He is referring implicitly to a passage from the Apocrypha of Clement (or Qälémentos): ‘The family of angels is numerous. They have no single aspect. Indeed, there are some who have many eyes; some who are only eyes; some who are a burst of light brighter than the light of the sun; some who have faces like a man’s face; some who have two wings; some who have one wing; some who are two wings; some who are all one wing’. Therefore, in a picture like this, eyes, face, and wings can all be angels” (p9).

A 1966 drawing by Szukalski of a never-done monument, reproduced in Struggle: The Art of Szukalski (also see previous posts).

Monument to Jules Stein Eye Institute, 1966. Click for larger version.

“Ever since the eye hospital was built in Westwood, California, I have wished to make a monument to its donor, Jules Stein. Not knowing his face, I placed the portrait of a stranger in its place in my drawing of the project.

“He is eagerly stepping forward from his prayerful kneeling position to magically touch the blind child’s eyes so that it may see. To see his wonderful world will be the most glorious of it’s experiences, for, like any child, it is but a foreigner…

“Please note the peacock feathers that make up the pedestal to this monument. It has two kinds of eyes; the ones that see and the ones that have no eyeballs. Instead of Wings of Inspiration, I gave the donor of this superb hospital the Eyes of Inspiration” (p109).

On the eye-wings is an inscription that reads:

To see,
To perceive,
To foresee,
To conceive,
So to create
More light.