#Illustration of man the microcosm within the universal macrocosm | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shinymoonbird · 3 years

Photo

He who removes the darkness from within and without, having obtained that eternal state made of light, who uproots the ignorance of his devotees, who though seeing and sporting in this universe is beyond the universe, to him, Sri Ramana, the Guru of the world and destroyer of sorrow, salutations! ~ Kavyakantha Ganapati Muni - Forty Verses in Praise of Sri Ramana, V. 22

ॐ

What is the Hridaya (Heart or Centre)?

On the 9th of August 1917, Sri Ramana Maharshi sat up at night in the Skandasramam. Kavyakantha and other bhaktas had gathered at his feet. For the benefit of all, Kavyakantha requested the Maharshi to explain fully 'the Heart' ( हृदय ) mentioned in his poem composed in 1915. [See "The Swami’s Verse”].

Maharshi thus answered:

हृदय, i.e. the Heart (or Centre), is that from which all thoughts spring.

A description of it is given in various passages of the Vedas:

The above comparison of the Heart to the plantain bud or lotus bud and various other physical descriptions [The Upanishad compares it also to the leaf of the Aswatha tree (ficus religiosa)] are given to assist the yogi's practice of meditation.

How do we proceed to trace all thoughts to their source, you may ask. Well, let us discover if all thoughts could in the first place be traced to some one thought as their base of operations, and let us then go deeper and find the source of the basic thought. Is there then any such basic or fundamental thought underlying all other thoughts? Do you not see that the thought or idea 'I' – the idea of personality – is such a root thought?

For us, Maharshi explained later, whenever any thought arises, these questions arise and should be raised by the aspirant aiming at Realisation:

'Does this thought exist independently of any person thinking, or does it exist only as the thought of a person, and if the latter is the case, to whom does it arise?'

The answer is: 'This thought arises only as a person's thought and this thought arises in me.' So the 'I' idea may be regarded as a stem from which other thoughts branch forth.

Next let us see the root source of this (stem). But how?

Dive deep in ecstatic concentration within yourself (i.e. within the 'I' thought) and perceive its source. There is nothing there to perceive in or through the senses. You have no guidance from sensation and rationalization for this search.

But if you have the right intuition, the Centre ‘ हृदय ‘ is immediately felt and the above or former 'I' which inquired disappears into this 'the Centre'. Thus, ‘ हृदय ‘ or the Heart Centre is the source of the 'I’-thought and of everything else.

The term ‘ हृदय ‘ (Heart) is however persistently identified by some who practice yoga with one of their six centres चक्रम् (chakram), i.e., their fourth centre called the (anahata chakram) situated in the chest. These yogis admit that ‘ हृदय ‘ denotes the source or abiding place of the personality. Well then, if these yogis wish to trace or promote the development of their personality or soul from its source or abiding place to its highest reach, as they profess to do, they should start its course from (anahata chakram), whereas they invariably start their course from (muladharam) which they style their first chakra. Hence one is perhaps well advised to confine the term, i.e., 'the Centre', to the Universal Centre or Brahman.

Brahman is often indicated in scripture as अयं' हृत् (ayam hrit), two words which make up ‘ हृदय ‘ (hridayam) when conjoined. Even the practicing yogi does not identify the ‘ हृदय ‘ (Heart) or (anahata) with the organ forming the centre of blood circulation (with its auricles and ventricles), and in the above stanza (vide Ch. II) the Heart ‘ हृदय ‘ is not used in a physiological sense, but rather as a metaphor and refers to the centre of consciousness. There is no harm, however, in taking ‘ हृदय ‘ to indicate an actual spatial region as is done in various parts of the scripture. There, ‘ हृदय ‘ is said to be on the right side of the chest (not on the left where the blood propeller is situated). From it radiates the sushumna nadi (or nerve), up which the current of consciousness or light goes to sahasrara (the thousand petalled – evidently referring to the brain with its numberless cells). From that sahasrara the light of consciousness passes again (evidently through the nerves) to all parts of the body and thereby the outside world is experienced by one.

But if the experiencer views the experienced object as something distinct from himself, i.e., from the Self, then he is caught up in the whirl of samsara, the wheel of metempsychosis, or chain of births and deaths. The sahasrara (i.e., brain) of the Atma Nishta, i.e. the Self-realizer, is pure light or enlightenment. If any flitting or passing desires approach it, they perish therein immediately. They have no soil to flourish upon there. The sankalpas or seeds of desire that occur in the Atma Nishta, staying in pure light or suddha sattva, are referred to in the Upanishads as getting parched or fried. Such a भृष्टबीजं (brishtabijam) does not give birth to fresh vasanas (tendencies) or karma (action), as they consume themselves, "nor leave a wrack behind”. This expression is frequently found in other Upanishads, in Vasishta and the works of Sri Sankaracharya, but this reference will suffice.

With the pure light mentioned, outside objects (vishayaha) are sensed or experienced, and their impress received. But, if these impressions are colored or swallowed up in the prevailing non-differentiation of the perfected yogi (Self-realized one), his yoga or Self-realization is not marred thereby. Even when receiving outside impressions, the yogi maintains his consciousness of the unity of existence; and it is this state of central conscious-unity with a (so to speak) peripheral experience of objects (the central light swallowing up the peripheral rays), that is called Sahaja Sthiti. But when the yogi completely shuts out cognizance of outside objects, his state is described as Nirvikalpa Samadhi, i.e., pure concentration, or the Absolute Consciousness without attributes or characteristics.

What are these objects which constitute the external universe? The entire universe or macrocosm is found in man, the microcosm. The entire man is found in the Heart, or Ultimate Centre. Ergo, the entire universe is found within that Centre, the Heart ‘ हृदय ‘. Again, looked at in another way, the external world does not exist without the mind perceiving it. That is, unless a mind perceives and notes the existence of the worlds, how is that existence to be posited? And the mind does not exist without the Centre ‘ हृदय ‘. Ergo, the entire world of experience ends at the Centre.

The respective positions of the Heart (the Centre) and the mind may be illustrated by an analogy:

What the sun is to the solar system – the origin of all, the supporter of all, and that which lights up all – that, the Centre (i.e., the Heart, or that which has intuition), is to man. What the moon is in the external universe, casting a delectable but uncertain light, incapable of creating or sustaining real life or throwing clear light on all objects, that the mind is when it works in or with the brain (sahasrara). Just as the moon borrows its light from the sun, so does the mind derive its power of knowing from the Centre, or Heart. It is when man has no intuition or illumination from that Centre or Heart, that he sees the mind as the only basis of his conscious activity, just as one may have, at night (i.e., when there is no sun), to be content to work by moonlight. At such a time the man is ignorant (pamara), as he does not see the source of all light (i.e., consciousness), viz. the Real, the Atman, but sees objects with the help of the mind alone, and sees them as different from himself; hence, he wanders as in a maze. The Jnani, on the other hand, stationed in the Centre, sees within it the mind, no doubt; but that mind is of as little significance to him as the moon when seen in daylight. The term Prajna has for its superficial denotation (Vachyartha) the mind, but it is in reality, i.e. in its essential content (lakshyartha), the Centre (हृदय), the Heart. Brahman is naught but that. To those who perceive with the help of the mind only, the difference of seer and seen exists, but to those at the Centre, they are one and the same.

Now, as for the advice given in the second half of the stanza (i.e., Chapter II) that one should enter into the Self in the Heart, there are, apart from spiritual enlightenment, other instances of the mind disappearing into the Centre by reason of deep sleep, excessive emotions of joy, sorrow, terror, rage, catalepsy, possession or coma. These also strike the mind and drive it into its source. However, in these states, there is no illumination or even awareness of one's individuality, whereas in the condition of Samadhi, the Self-realization achieved by the yogi, one has such awareness and illumination. That is the difference between Samadhi and the above mentioned states.

~ The Sri Ramana Gita - Chapter V

https://archive.arunachala.org/newsletters/2010/jan-feb

ૐ Arunachala Shiva

#Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi #Sri Ramana Gita #B. V. Narasimha Swami #Kavyakantha Ganapati Sastri #Brahman #Hridaya Heart Centre #hridaya kuhara madhye #mind is thought-'I'#the “I-thought” is the first #root thought #vichara #atma-vichara #Who am I?#Self-enquiry #Self-Investigation #sphurana 'I-I'#intuition

12 notes · View notes

archiveofprolbems · 3 years

Text

The Sounding Image: About the relationship between art and music—an art-historical retrospective view by Barbara John

Since the early days of Modernism, the interplay between art and music has given considerable impetus to the development of new art forms. [1] This essay will examine the pre-history of this modern synergy. In comparison with other contributions to Media Art Net, the historical framework here is considerably larger. This is justified by the nature of the subject matter: artificial images and sounds have been created since the dawn of human culture. Therefore it is quite right that many texts refer back to prehistory, or at least the ancient world. But a great deal remains speculative here, and often history is reinterpreted, or even written, from an entirely modern point of view.

The approach in this essay will be different. Theoretical statements by artists that have come down to us will be used to show, from a short review of Western culture, how this relationship, which began in very different conditions, changed over the centuries from an art-historical point of view and led to all the arts working together on an equal footing. The route will lead rapidly from antiquity and the Middles Ages to the transition from classical artistic techniques to the beginnings of media art.

Art and music - an unequal start

In the Christian West music was one of the seven free arts, the so-called artes liberales, whereas fine art was seen merely as a craft activity. [2] Music's high standing was based on the philosophy of Pythagoras, who explained musical theory in terms of mathematical laws that were interpreted cosmologically in the Middle Ages. With arithmetic, geometry and astrology, music made up a quadrumvirate working on a mathematical basis within the artes liberales, and it was allotted a special function as a hinge between microcosm and macrocosm.

But even Plato recognized a special connection between eye and sound. Synaesthesia (Greek: sharedsensitivity) has been an epistemological topic since the days of ancient philosophy. Since the Baroque era in particular is has also been an experimental field for inventors of machines and theoretical speculators, like Pater Castel, for example. But this essay will not deal with individual aspects so much as synaesthesia in its full cultural context.

Medieval sacred art and music

The Western roots of a direct interplay between art and music lie in Christian liturgy. [3] The structure of the church building as the place where mass is celebrated emphasizes the special significance of music through the choir, which is immediately adjacent to the altar. Music is an indispensable part of the celebration of mass, and the artistic decoration of the altar is essential for the ceremonial process. Ostentatious medieval piety required staging that appealed to all the senses, like a religious Gesamtkunstwerk: the act of worship climaxing in the raising of the host is accompanied by singing, incense and the glow of candles - with the altarpiece as a pictorial setting. The variety of artistic contributions ranges from the decoration of the musical instruments via the miniature painting in the hymnbooks to panel painting.

The liturgical order determined the content of the art and music programme. The fixed Christian festivals in the liturgical calendar do not determine the choice of liturgical singing alone, they also affect the iconography of the altarpiece. This applies particularlyto the worship of Mary and saints that was widespread in the Middle Ages. This led to an expansion of the iconography of Mary in panel painting, and in liturgy to an increasing number of hymns venerating the Mother of God, which were sung on the appropriate feast days. One especially striking example of saint-worship is the altar painting by the Cologne master Stephan Lochner for the altar of the Three Kings.

In contrast with the Latin hymns, which ordinary people did not understand, and the theological content of the altarpieces, which had to be explained to laymen, a much more vivid way of conveying religious messages developed with the rise of mysticism. Mystery plays, particularly the Easter Passion Plays, emerged from the 12th century, and proved a fertile field of activity for painters, sculptors and musicians. They stimulated new musical and pictorial compositions. Performances required musical accompaniment, and at the same time new ritual figures were designed, like for example the Passion ass for the Palm Sunday play and the sculpture of Mary to be raised in the nave for the feast of the Assumption. Both music and art helped to stage a popular spectacle with religious content.

Book-, wall- and panel-painting count as important pictorial evidence of the history of popular and instrumental music. But they were not intended simply to illustrate, but also to instruct. David with his harp, Salome's dance and the host of angels playing musical instruments are particularly familiar Biblical themes. [4] In secular images we find the singing troubadour, round dances or the personification of music.

Renaissance - the arts in competition

Social changes started in the late Middle Ages: painters, sculptors and architects began to be classed as artists. In the early days of the Renaissance, the arts started to compete with each other. Until then the fine arts had been subordinate to the artes liberales like music, but this was questioned by universally talented artists like Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). One key reason was the discovery of central perspective. This led to a close link between art and mathematics, as artistic composition was now subject to mathematical rules.

Alberti and Leonardo studied perspective intensively, and demanded enhanced status for thefine arts in their writings, particularly in relation to music.

Alberti was principally concerned with the arts' competition between each other. He felt that painting should be allotted the highest status. As a humanistic scholar he insisted that painters should not just have artistic talent, but should also be taught all the free arts, above all geometry. In his theoretical treatise on painting «De Pictura» of 1435/36 he writes: «Hence painting enjoys such high esteem that its exponents, given the admiration accorded to their works, are almost inclined to think that they are to the greatest possible degree similar to God. And is it not further the case that painting should be deemed the teacher of all the other arts - or at least their outstanding adornment?" [5] And Alberti goes on to write: «So: this art gives pleasure, if it is cultivated; it ensures esteem, wealth and eternal fame only if it is so cultivated that it reaches a high standing, Given this - as painting turns our to be the best and most honourable adornment of all things, worthy of free men, beloved equally of the learned and the unlearned - I require all the more emphatically of youth that is eager to learn that they may turn their efforts towards painting, to the greatest feasible extent.» [6] Alberti, who rose to considerable fame as an architect in particular, applied musical numerical proportions to architectural construction. Famous examples are his designs for the churches of S. Francesco in Rimini (1453) and S. Andrea in Mantua (1470). [7]

Leonardo raised the argument to a higher plane. He doubted the superiority of the artes liberales as opposed to the fine arts. His exemplary comparison of art and music led to a demand that art should enjoy equal status. As a universal scholar, he was knowledgeable in all fields. It is said that Leonardo even designed musical instruments, for example a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head for Prince Lodovico Sforza in Milan. He is also said to have been an outstanding musician. For his famous portrait of the Mona Lisa he arranged for music and singing during the sittings, to encourage the subject to look cheerful. [8] In his now famous treatise «Il Paragone», Leonardo wrote in detail about the relationship between painting and music: «If you say that the non-mechanical sciences are the intellectual ones, that I say thatpainting is intellectual and that it, just as music and geometry consider the relationship between the continuous quantities, and arithmetic the relationship between the discontinuous quantities, painting considers all continuous qualities of the relationship between light and shade and with perspective, those of distances.» [9] And further: «Music can be called nothing other than the sister of painting, as it is subject to hearing, as sense that comes after sight, and creates harmony by combining its well-proportioned and simultaneously appearing parts, though they are compelled to emerge and to fade away in a single or several tempos. These tempos enfold the wellfitting quality of the elements from which the harmony is composed, no differently from the way that the lines describe the elements of which the human beauty is composed. Painting towers over and dominates music, because it does not fade away immediately after it is created like unfortunate music, but, on the contrary, remains alive, and so something that in reality is nothing but a surface shows itself to be a living thing. Oh wondrous science, you keep the fragile beauty of mortal man alive, and it thus becomes more lasting than the works of nature, as these are subject to the remorseless changes of time, and of necessity become old. This science (painting) relates to the divine being as its works relate to the works of this being, and for his reason it is worshipped.» [10]

The particular significance of mathematics as a common basis for music and fine art was addressed above all in marquetry work. From the late 15th century, the wooden cladding of choir stalls and scholar's studies showed trompe-l'oeil-like still life compositions made up of mathematical instruments, musical instruments, books and views of architecture.

Artists vitae, like that of Giorgio Vasari, dating from the 16th century, repeatedly report on the musical talents of individual artists. One of these is the Venetian painter Giogione (1478–1511), a passionate lutenist whose divine singing and playing of music was held in such high esteem that he was invited to prestigious events staged by the nobility as a musician. [11] He addressed music in his painting as well. Music is the central theme in one painting by Giorgione, the «Concert champêtre» (c. 1510, Louvre, Paris). The pastoral scene shows a lutenist resting in a meadow,turning to face a shepherd, and also nude woman playing a flute. On the left-hand edge of the picture a second naked woman is holding a jug over a stone trough. Giorgione, who was himself a passionate musician, is addressing the pastoral landscape as a place of musical inspiration here, where the urban musician is being given artistic inspiration by the divine muses and the shepherd. [12] Another example of the secularization of music as a theme takes us to Rome and the late 16th century.

Baroque - secularization and illusionism

In the course of the 16th century, music increased in popularity as part of a process of increasing secularization, but also as a topic of tangible refinement of sensual delight in life. In painting, the theme tends to crop up as an allegory of fleeting, transient existence. It quickly became a favourite subject for the genre painting that was emerging at the time.

The Italian painter Caravaggio (1571-1610) offers an early example. For his Roman patron Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, with whom he lodged for a time, he painted a half-figure Group Portrait with Musicians. The youth playing the lute in the centre is surrounded by three other young men, including Caravaggio himself, who is placed behind the lute player on the right and looking at the viewer. He has a horn in his hand. In the background on the left it is possible to make out a winged cupid with a vine. A fourth youth is completely absorbed in studying sheet music. Even if one assumes that these are portraits of musicians from Cardinal del Monte's entourage, the ancient costumes also suggest an allegory, similarly to Giorgione's picture. As well as the homoerotic nature of the piece, its significance includes the allegorical reference to love and music. [13]

In the next century, further development of secular themes led to the emergence of the music still life. Musical instruments depicted alone appear as individual pictures, but also in an allegorical cycle of the human sensory organs. Old inventories record that cycles of this kind were arranged in Baroque chambers of art and curiosities, the predecessors of the modern museum. Rooms of this kind displayed a microcosm of paintings and sculptures, stuffed animals, herbariums,minerals, optical instruments and much more. Music still lifes do not just depict a whole range of the instruments of the day, the idea of vanity makes them instruments of the vanity of sensual pleasure, indeed quite simply into an allegory of man's short life.

Musical instruments occur in the context of depicting a loose life in countless Baroque genre pictures. Music being played in an inn, at a lovers' tryst or in a society salon becomes the symbol of a morally dubious approach to life.

In Baroque churches, architecture, painting and sculpture enter into a symbiosis under religious conditions for the last time. This aimed to merge all the genres, but also posed the threat of making religious content too superficial. As a response to the Counter-Reformation, Catholic church interiors were redesigned to enhance religious edification: high, vaulted naves, colourful painterly and sculptural decoration, highlighted with gold, an organ. The Catholic Church reacted to the Protestant ban of images with a new and sensual pictorial strategy that was not content with presenting a single image, but included the whole church interior. All the design elements worked together on the basis of the Baroque sense of emphatic sensuality and overflowing emotion, but also the idea of transience. The church interior was seen as a reflection of heaven, and an attempt was made to dissolve the boundaries between this world and the next with the interplay of architecture, sculpture and illusionistic wall painting. The nave was intended to open out as it rose, and the believer's eye was to be turned towards heaven and the welcoming saints, all to the sound of the organ. The 17th and 18th centuries are celebrated as the heyday of organ-building. Regular organ landscapes were created, driven by different architectural and liturgical requirements: it was only in liturgical celebration that musical orchestration and artistic decoration of a space could merge. This was to influence one of the guiding intellectual forces of Modernism - Richard Wagner - to some considerable extent.

Early Modernism - Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk

In the course of the 19th century music acquired outstanding status when compared with the fine arts. Music's expressive resources could successfully reach awide public that was listening to a new language - especially that of Beethoven - after the Enlightenment, revolution and a war that had raged all over Europe. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer remarked on this: «Music is the true common language that is understood everywhere…. But it does not speak of things, rather of nothing but wellbeing and woe, which are the only realities for the will.» [14]

It is not surprising under these conditions that it was a musician who tried to bring the arts together, naturally with music in prime position: Richard Wagner (1813-1883). In his essay «Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft» (The Art-Work of the Future), he conceived an interplay of the arts as a Gesamtkunstwerk: «The great Gesamtkunstwerk that has to embrace all genres of art, in order to consume, to destroy each one of these genres to some extent as resources for the sake of achieving the overall purpose of them all, in other words the unconditional, direct representation of perfect human nature - this great Gesamtkunstwerk it (i.e. our spirit) recognizes not as the arbitrary possible deed of the individual, but as the necessarily conceivable joint work of the people of the future.» [15]

Wagner identified the composer Beethoven, the hero of «absolute music», as leading the way in this movement. He describes Beethoven's symphonies as «redeeming music from its own most particular element to become general art. It is the human gospel of the art of the future. No progress is possible from it, from it only the perfect work of art of the future can follow directly, the general drama, to which Beethoven has forged the artistic key for us. Thus music has produced from itself something that none of the other separate arts could do.» [16]

Wagner believed that he had received this artistic key himself. He strove towards the Gesamtkunstwerk he so desired to achieve by building the Festspielhaus in Bayreth, reserved exclusively for performances of his own works. The musical staging, with the orchestra in a concealed pit that concentrates the audience's attention entirely on the interplay of music and stage setting is seen as a precursor of cinematic performances.

Wagner's ideas were not without their effect on the fine arts. One of the outstanding examples of hisenormous cultural influence is provided by the Leipzig artist Max Klinger (1857- 1920). Over 16 years, and at a cost of over 100,000 marks he created his polychrome «Beethoven» sculpture.

Classical Modernism - the early days of abstraction

Wagner's synaesthetic ideas became the starting-point for one of Modernism's fundamental developments: abstraction. The simultaneity of acoustic and visual perception, made reality by staging at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, became a new challenge for those who were preparing the way for abstract painting. As well as Frantisek Kupka (1871-1957), Mikalojus Ciurlionis (1875-1911) and Francis Picabia (1879-1953), these included the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). Looking back on his early days on Moscow, Kandinsky remarked: «But Lohengrin seemed to be to be a perfect realization of this Moscow. The violins, the deep base notes and the wind instruments in particular embodied the whole power of the evening hour for me at that time. I saw all my colours in my mind, they were there before my eyes. Wild, almost mad lines drew themselves in front of me. I did not dare use the expression that Wagner had painted <my hour> in music. But it was quite clear to me that on the other hand painting could develop the same sort of powers that music possesses.» [17]

A key experience for the synaesthetically inclined Kandinksy was contact with the music of the composer Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951). With Franz Marc, Alexei Javelensky, Marianne von Werefkin and Gabriele Münther and other members of the <Neue Künstlervereinigung> he attended one of Schönberg's concerts in Munich on 2 January 1911. The programme included a string quartet that introduced Schönberg's atonal period and the opus 11 piano pieces. This concert gave Kandinsky an important boost on his way to abstraction. His 1911 painting «Impression 3» was created as a result of this musical input. [18]

Abandoning perspective and also detaching colour from the objective motif took Kandinsky straight into abstraction. Even though he had taken the first steps in this direction in 1908/09, he had needed the crucial musical experience to help him risk the decisive step. Just as Schönberg had liberated himself from the constraints of the rules of musical composition,Kandinsky was trying to extricate himself from the dictates of imitating nature. Thus the end of central perspective in painting coincided with the loss of a binding key system in music. Composer and painter met at a turning-point. Kandinsky immediately tried to get in touch with Schönberg personally, who also painted, and made him a member of the «Blauer Reiter». In his first letter to Schönberg, he wrote: «You have realized something in your works that I was longing for in music, admittedly in an uncertain form. The natural movement through their own fate, the personal life in the individual voices in our composition in precisely what I am trying to find in the form of painting.» [19]

Unlike Kandinsky, who was decisively inspired towards atonal music by Schönberg, for the French painter Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) simultaneity and hence temporal perception shifted into the centre of his artistic output. He used the rules of simultaneous contrast to create vibrations in the eye. Time became a new category within artistic creativity, taking over from the meaning of space with a central perspective to a certain extent. Rhythm created a particular affinity between art and music. Delaunay's pictorial motifs started to move, they were even intended to lead to insights into the world over and above the optical effect. His friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, poetically called this way of painting «Orphism.» A piece of Paragone seems to flare up again when we read this statement by Delaunay: «The eye is our most highly developed sense; it is most closely connected with our brain, our consciousness. It conveys the idea of the vital movement of the world and this movement is called simultaneity.» [20]

In Delaunay's case, painting became time-based colour composition. Perception was no longer based on the classical perspective composition of a rectangular framed picture. In his 1912 series of «Window Pictures» Delaunay composed imaged that were metres long, representing the perception of the picture subject as a time sequence, like an excerpt.

Delaunay wrote as follows about his «Window Pictures«: «The choice of ‹Window Pictures› as a title is still a reminder of concrete reality; but the new form the expressive resources are taking canalready be seen. These are windows on to a new reality. This new reality means nothing other than spelling out new expressive resources; these create the new form purely physically, as elements of colour. Among other things, these pictorial elements are juxtaposed contrasts that build up pictorial architecture, a complex, similar to an orchestra, developing like movements in colour. […] The series invokes only the sujet, the composition and orchestration of colours. That is the origin, the first appearance of non-representational painting in France. […] The colour is its own function; all its motion is present at every moment, as in musical composition at the time of Bach, or good jazz in our day.» [21]

Delaunay's reflections about the meaning of colour, linked with the loss of perspective and the new pictorial order analogous with musical composition are reminiscent of Kandinky's ideas. In fact the two artists met at the first «Blauer Reiter» exhibition in Munich in December 1911, in which Delaunay also featured. Correspondence between them from autumn 1911 to spring 1912, when Delaunay began his «Windows Series», has survived. [22]

From painting to the moving picture

Alongside Delaunay's painterly approach, artists also tried to compose colour rhythms as real movement. Leopold Survage (1879-1968) designed over seventy studies for his film project «Rhythme Coloré» in 1913. This was a colour-rhythm symphony that was unfortunately never realized. Survage summed up his aims as follows in 1914: «After painting had liberated itself from the conventional objects of the outside world, it conquered the terrain of abstract forms. Now it has to get over its last, fundamental barrier - immobility, so that it can become an expressive resource for our sensations that is as rich and subtle as music. Everything that is accessible to us has duration in time, which manifests itself most strongly in rhythm, activity and movement […] I want to animate my painting, I want to give it movement, I want to introduce rhythm into the concrete action of my abstract painting, rhythm that derives from my inner life.» [23]

As well as Survage, the Swedish painter Helmuth Viking Eggeling (1890-1925) and the Dadaist and film pioneer Hans Richter (1888-1976) worked on this subject. The two men met in Zurich in 1918, and worked together for several years in their search for a universal language. Richter described this period as follows: «Music became a model for both of us. We found a principle that fitted our philosophy in musical counterpoint: each action produces a corresponding reaction. So we found a suitable system in counterpoint fugue, a dynamic and polar arrangement of conflicting energies, and we saw life as such in this model. […] Month after month we studied and compared our analytical drawings, which we had prepared on hundreds of sheets of paper, until we finally came to see them as living creatures that grew, and then passed away […] Now we seemed to be confronted with a new problem, that of continuity […] until - late in 1919 - decided to do something. Eggeling made one theme of elements into the <Horizontal-Vertical-Mass>, on long paper rolls, and I made one of the rolls into <Präludium>. [24] The results of their experiments with form on long paper rolls took Richter and Eggeling directly to film. Their abstract formal studies became the basis for film scores. They and Walter Ruttmann (1887-1941) count as pioneers of the abstract film. [25]

The Bauhaus was a special place where the different arts could develop symbiotically. Many of the masters teaching fine art there were extraordinarily interested in music, like for example Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, (1888-1943) and László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). Paul Klee (1879- 1940) also repeatedly included motifs from music in his drawings and water-colours. He discovered a relationship between painting and music at a very early stage. He put it like this in his diary: «The main disadvantage for the observer or re-creator is that they are faced with an end, and seems to be going in the opposite direction as far as genesis is concerned. […] Musical works have the advantage of being taken up again in the sequence in which they were conceived, and on repeated hearing the disadvantage of being tiring because of the evenness of the impression they make. For the ignorant, creative work has the disadvantage being at aloss about where to begin, and for the intelligent the advantage of varying the sequence strongly while taking it in.» [26] Klee perceived space as time, like Delaunay, to whom he had been introduced through Kandinsky in 1912. Instead of the concept of simultaneity that Delaunay had introduced, Klee used polyphony: «Polyphonic painting is superior to music in that temporal qualities are more spatial here. The concept of simultaneity merges more richly here. To illustrate the backward movement that I think out for music, I remember the reflection in the side windows of a moving tram.» [27]

Klee also claimed the category of time for painting. Differently from Leonardo, he sees time as the element that links the individual arts. His water-colours produced around 1921, which include «Fuge in Rot» (Fugue in Red), greatly influenced experiments with light projections taking place in the Bauhaus.

Abstract sounds - multi-media performances

Klee's colour compositions stimulated Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack (1893-1965), who was still registered as a Bauhaus student at the time, to conduct his first experiments with light projections. [28] His first ideas for the so-called «Farbenlicht-Spiele» (Colour-Light Games) date from 1921/22. The abstract play of coloured forms was performed at the Bauhaus in 1923, accompanied by piano music. Several fellow performers were needed to realize the score the artist had devised. The colour forms emerging from the darkness of the projection room are directly reminiscent of Klee's water-colour compositions, they are painting translating into movement. Hirschfeld-Mack said of his light projections: «…we are aiming for a fugue-like, strictly structured play of colours, always derived from a definite colour-form theme.» [29]

The Hanover Dadaist Kurt Schwitters (1897-1948) did not work with colours, but with words. His so-called «Merz art» includes all artistic fields, from architecture via painting to poetry. According to Schwitters, the word «Merz» means «bringing every conceivable material together for artistic purposes, and technically the fact that the individual materials make the same effect in principle..» [30] Perhaps it was by chance that the first Merz work happened to come into being in association with music: Schwitters had his subject,a doctor-friend, play the piano while sitting for a portrait. When the man started to become agitated over Beethoven's «Moonlight Sonata», Schwitter intuitively glued a beer mat on to the cheek in the portrait! His first Merz poems were written around 1919, like «An Anna Blume» (To Anna Blume), for example. The «Lautsonate Merz 13» (Sound Sonata Merz 13) appeared on a gramophone record in 1924, and the «Ursonate» (Sonata with primeval sounds) was composed over a long period in several versions from 1922 to 1932. Schwitters wrote as follows in the magazine G in 1924: «It is not the word that is originally the material of poetry, it is the letter.» Thus he claims letters, or sounds, as the raw material for his poetry, like the rubbish he found in the streets and used for his material collages. Schwitters summed up his intentions in «Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Künstler» (The Artists' Right to Self-Determination) in 1919: «Merz poetry is abstract. Like Merz painting, it uses complete sentences from newspapers, posters, catalogue, conversations etc, as given elements, with and without changes. (That is terrible.) These elements do not need to fit in with the meaning, as there is no more meaning. (That is also terrible.) There are also no more elephants, there are only parts of the poem. (That is dreadful.) And you? (Draws war loan.) Decide yourselves what is poem and what is frame.» [31]

Fine artists increasingly frequently took part in avant-garde plays or even wrote their own pieces in the 1920s. Known works are Kandinsky's drafts for Mussorgsky's «Pictures at an Exhibition» (1928) or Oskar Schlemmer's «Triadisches Ballett» (Triadic Ballet), 1922/26.

An early example of composers and artists working together is provided by the Russian Futurist Alexei Krutschonych's opera. Michail Matjuschin set the libretto of his opera «Sieg über die Sonne» (Victory over the Sun) to music, and Kasimir Malevich designed the costumes and stage set. The piece had its world premiere in St. Petersburg in December 1913. The piece's trans-rational language was made up of incomprehensible word coinages, and came to express the so-called new reason that replaced the old values, symbolized by the sun. The opera was also of lasting importance for artistic development in Russia: Malevich deployed elements of Suprematism for the first time here. The Russian Constructivist El Lissitzky (1890-1941)takes up the theme again in 1920/21. He designed mechanical figures as a «three-dimensional design for an electro-mechanical show» for a planned new performance of the opera «Sieg über die Sonne» as a multi-media spectacle.

Lissitzky explained his aims himself in the foreword to an edition portfolio containing a selection of the stage designs: «This material is the fragment of a work created in Moscow in 1920/21 … We build a scaffolding in a square that is accessible and open on all sides, that is the show machinery. This scaffolding makes it possible for the show bodies to move in absolutely any way… They glide, roll, float up, in and over the scaffolding. All the parts of the scaffolding and all the bodies involved are set in motion using electro-mechanical forces and devices, and these are controlled by a single person. This is the show designer. His place is in the centre of the scaffolding at the switchboard for all energies. He directs the movement, the sound and the light. He switches the radio megaphone on and the din of railways stations rings out over the square, the roar of Niagara Falls, hammering in a rolling mill. Beams of light follow the movements of the bodies involved, refracted by prisms and reflections…The sun as expression of the old world energy in torn down from the sky by modern man, who can create his own source of energy because of his technical mastery. This idea in the opera is tied into the simultaneity of events. The language is alogical. Individual poems are sound poems.»

The classical artistic techniques like instrumental music and painting have already been gradually overcome by Survage, Viking-Eggeling, Richter, Ruttmann, Hirschfeld-Mack and replaced by new media forms like film, light and sound apparatuses. A new totality is designed that no longer operates as a individual work of genius, but is intended to be an event for the whole of society, in the political context of revolutionary Russia. Here the imposition of technology on human beings and sound has finally consumed Wagner's vision of the divine composer in favour of a world of apparatus that confronts the artist with a completely new set of tasks.

[1] For an introduction see Karin v. Maur (ed.), Vom Klang der Bilder. Musik in der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1985; Helga de la Motte-Haber, Musik und bildende Kunst, Laaber, 1990; Frank Schneider (ed.), Im Spiel der Wellen. Musik nach Bildern, Munich, 2000.

[2] M. Bernhard, »Musik«, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. VI, Munich, 1993, column 948-955.

[3] Johannes Tripps, Das handelnde Bildwerk in der Gotik. Forschungen zu den Bedeutungsschichten und der Funktion des Kirchengebäudes und seiner Ausstattung in der Hoch- und Spätgotik, Berlin, 1998.

[4] H. Braun, «Musik, Musikinstrumente», in: Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, 4th vol., Freiburg 1994, column 597– 611.

[5] Leon Battista Alberti, De pictura, 26, quoted from: idem, Das Standbild. Die Malkunst. Grundlagen der Malerei, ed. by O. Bätschmann/Ch. Schäublin, Darmstadt, 2000, p. 237.

[6] Leon Battista Alberti, De pictura, 26, quoted from: idem, Das Standbild. Die Malkunst. Grundlagen der Malerei, ed. by O. Bätschmann/Ch. Schäublin, Darmstadt, 2000, p. 245.

[7] Cf. Leon Battista Alberti, ed. by Joseph Rykwert/Anne Engel, Manuta, 1994, pp. 224-241.

[8] Cf. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori, ed. by G. Milanesi, vol. IV, Florence MDCCCLXXIX, pp. 28, 40.

[9] Leonardo da Vinci, Il Paragone, LV 31c, quoted from: Leonardo da Vinci. Sämtliche Gemälde und die Schriften zur Malerei, ed. by André Chastel, Munich, 1990, p. 135.

[10] Leonardo da Vinci, Il Paragone, LV 29, quoted from: Leonardo da Vinci. Sämtliche Gemälde und die Schriften zur Malerei, ed. by André Chastel, Munich, 1990, p. 146.

[11] Cf. Giorgio Vasari, Le vite dei più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori, ed. by G. Milanesi, vol. IV, Florence MDCCCLXXIX, p. 92.

[12] Cf. Gabriele Frings, Giorgiones Ländliches Konzert. Darstellung der Musik als künstlerisches Programm in der venezianischen Malerei der Renaissance, Berlin, 1999.

[13] Cf. The Age of Caravaggio, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1985, pp. 228–235.

[14] Arthur Schopenhauer, Paralipomena § 218.

[15] Richard Wagner, «Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft,» in idem, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, Leipzig, 1907, ( pp. 42–177), p. 60.

[17] Wassily Kandinsky, Rückblicke (Berlin 1913), 3. ed. Bern, 1977, p. 14.

[18] Cf. Schönberg, Kandinsky, Blauer Reiter und die Russsche Avantgarde, Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 1/2000, Vienna, 2000.

[19] Quoted from Matthias Schmidt, «Arnold Schönberg und Wassily Kandinsky. Biographische Annäherungen,» p. 19, in Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 1/2000, pp. 16-32.

[20] Robert Delaunay, «Das Licht,» in Hajo Düchting (ed.), Robert Delaunay. Zur Malerei der reinen Farbe, Schriften 1912– 1940, Munich, 1983, p. 125.

[21] Robert Delaunay, «Das Licht,» in Hajo Düchting (ed.), Robert Delaunay. Zur Malerei der reinen Farbe, Schriften 1912– 1940, Munich, 1983, pp. 36-37.

[22] Cf. «Wassily Kandinsky – Robert Delaunay: Ein Dialog im April 1912. Rekonstruktion», in Robert Delaunay. Sonia Delaunay. Das Centre Pompidou zu Gast in Hamburg, Cologne 1999, pp. 186-191.

[23] Leopold Survage, Document Nr. 8182, July 29, 1914, Académie des Sciences, Paris, quoted from: Karin von Maur (ed.), Vom Klang der Bilder. Musik in der Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Munich, 1985, p. 228.

[24] Quoted from Standish D. Lawder, «Der abstrakte Film: Richter und Eggeling,» in: Hans Richter 1888–1976. Dadaist. Filmpionier. Maler. Theoretiker, Berlin/Zurich/Munich, 1982, pp. 27–35, here p. 30.

[25] Cf. the essay «Sound & Vision in Avantgarde & Mainstream» by Dieter Daniels and the source text by Walter Ruttmann, «Malerei mit Zeit.»

[26] Quoted from Christian Geelhaar, Paul Klee. Schriften. Rezensionen und Aufsätze, Cologne, 1976, p. 173.

[27] Paul Klee, Tagebuch Nr. 1081, quoted from Christian Geelhaar, «Moderne Malerei und Musik der Klassik – eine Parallele», in: Paul Klee. Das Werk der Jahre 1919–1933. Gemälde, Handzeichnungen, Druckgraphik, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 1979, pp. 31–44, here p. 37.

[28] Cf. Holger Wilmsmeier, Deutsche Avantgarde und Film. Die Filmmatinee ‹Der absolute Film› 3. und 10. Mai 1925 (diss. Heidelberg, 1993), Münster ,1994, pp. 7–16. Anne Hoormann, Lichtspiele. Zur Medienreflexion der Avantgarde in der Weimarer Republik, Munich, 2003, pp. 116–120, 159–166.

[29] Quoted from Anne Hoormann, Lichtspiele. Zur Medienreflexion der Avantgarde in der Weimarer Republik, Munich, 2003, p. 165.

[30] Kurt Schwitters, «Die Merzmalerei,» (1919), quoted from Kurt Schwitters. Ich ist Stil, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, 2000, p. 90.

[31] Kurt Schwitters, «Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Künstler.» 1919, quoted from Dietmar Elger, Der Merzbau von Kurt Schwitters. Eine Werkmonographie, Cologne, 1999, pp. 17–18.

Source: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/image-sound_relations/sounding_mage/

2 notes · View notes

basicsofislam · 4 years

Text

ISLAM 101: Creation: Part 5

Why Does the Qur’an Not Discuss Scientific Issues That Concern Us Today?

The Qur’an was revealed for specific purposes: to make us aware of the Creator, to affirm that He is known through His creation, to direct us to belief and worship, and to order individual and collective life so that we attain real happiness here and in the Hereafter. The Qur’an deals with each subject according to the importance attached to it by God.

Given the above reasons, the Qur’an is comprehensive. This can be seen by the countless books and commentaries written about its various aspects. The perfection of its style and eloquence has been attested to by the greatest Muslim literary masters of every century, and has inspired them to excellence not only in Arabic but also in other Islamic languages. By basing themselves on Islam, Muslim scholars of humanity or the physical world have been able to comprehend the real nature of things and events. Through the Qur’an’s wisdom, psychologists and sociologists have resolved the thorniest problems related to individual or collective affairs. Moralists and pedagogues have turned to the Qur’an as an infinite, inexhaustible resource for educating future generations.

Today, many people want to know what the Qur’an says about scientific and technological matters, and how it relates to modern positive sciences. Many books have been written on this subject. They have tried to relate Qur’anic truths to advances in scientific knowledge. Many of these books were influenced by the culture and science of their time. But despite the care and pains expended on these commentaries, people doubt their accuracy and find them over-elaborate and far-fetched. In particular, efforts to make Qur’anic truths correspond to particular scientific hypotheses appear to distort, misrepresent, and even slight the Qur’an.

When explaining the Qur’an, we must be objective and remain faithful to its precision, soundness, and clarity. Instead of interpreting it in the light of certain phenomena and a non-Qur’anic specialist language, everything should be interpreted and evaluated in the Qur’anic context. Of course, the Qur’an is best understood by a nuanced knowledge of Arabic’s vocabulary and grammatical rules, and the occasions of the verse’s revelation. Thus the best understanding and interpretation is that of the Companions, then of the Successors (the following generation), and then of the first commentators, such as Ibn Jarir. These, and not the later ones, are the most in accord with scientific truths established later on.

We offer several examples from the Qur’an to illustrate the argument.

• The Omnipotent Creator says that the future will be the age of knowledge and information, and thus, as a natural consequence, of faith and belief: Soon We shall show them Our signs on the furthest horizons, and in their own souls, until it becomes manifest to them that this is true. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses all things? (41:53)

From the earliest days of Islam, Sufis accepted and referred to this verse as a sign and assurance of the spiritual wisdom they sought. However, reading this verse from the viewpoint of scientific progress, its mere existence will be seen to be a miracle.

Everything within the compass of our thinking and research affirms the Creator’s Oneness, as the true nature and interrelationship of microcosm and macrocosm are further disclosed and better understood. When we see hundreds of books on this subject, we understand that what was Divinely revealed is near to being proved. Even now we feel that soon we shall hear and be able to understand the testimonies and praises to God through thousands of tongues belonging to nature: The seven Heavens and the Earth, and all things therein, declare His Glory. There is not a thing but celebrates His praise. And yet you do not understand how they declare His Glory. Truly He is Oft-Forbearing, Most Forgiving (17:44).

This verse tells us that all parts of creation speak to us, in the language of their being, of their submission to and glorification of the One God. However, very few people can hear and understand this universal praise. The sincere Muslims who will bring all people to hear this praise is also few, dispersed, and feeble.

• What the Qur’an reveals about an embryo’s formation and developmental phases in the uterus is striking: O mankind! If you have a doubt about the Resurrection, (consider) that We created you out of dust, then out of sperm, then out of a leech-like clot, then out of a lump of flesh, partly formed and partly unformed, in order that We may manifest (what We will) to you… (22:5)

In another verse, the development is explained in greater detail, and the distinct phases are emphasized more clearly:

We created man from a quintessence (of clay). Then We placed him as (a drop of) sperm in a place of rest, firmly fixed. Then we made the sperm into a clot of congealed blood. Then of that clot, We made a lump (embryo); then we made out of that lump bones and clothed the bones with flesh. Then We developed out of it a new (distinct, individual) creature (23:12–14)

And

He makes you in the wombs of your mothers in stages, one after another, in three veils of darkness … (39:6)

These three veils of darkness can now be glossed in detail: the parametrium, myometrium, and the endometrium are three tissues enveloping three water-, heat-, and light-proof membranes (the amnion, chorion and the wall of the womb).

• What the Qur’an says about milk and its production: And verily in cattle (too) will you find an instructive sign. From what is from their bodies, between excretions and blood, We produce, for your drink, milk, pure and agreeable to those who drink it (16:66).

The Qur’an narrates the process in remarkable detail: the partial digestion of food and its absorption, followed by a second process and refinement in the glands. Milk is wholesome and agreeable for people, yet it is a secretion rejected by the cow’s body and bloodstream as useless.

• The Qur’an reveals that all things in nature are created in pairs: Glory be to God, who created in pairs all things, of what the soil produces, and of themselves, and of what they know not (36:36).

Thus everything has a counterpart, whether opposite to it or complementary. This is obvious in the case of people, animals, and certain plants. But, what about the pairs in all things … and of what they know not? This may refer to a whole range of inanimate as well as animate entities, subtle forces, and principles of nature. Modern scientific instruments confirm that everything does occur in pairs.

• The Qur’an recounts, in its own unique idiom, the first creation of the world and its inhabitants: Do not the unbelievers see that the Heavens and the Earth were joined together (as a single mass) before We clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe? (21:30).

The Qur’anic account is clear and should not be mixed with the different creation hypotheses put forward by others. It states that every living thing was created of water. The Qur’an does not concern itself with how this unique source of life came into being, but with the fact that the universe is a single miracle of creation. Everything in it is an integral part of that miracle, bears signs that prove it, and is interconnected. The verse emphasizes the vitality and significance of water, which constitutes three-quarters of the mass of most living bodies.

• The sun has a special and significant place in creation. The Qur’an reveals its most important aspects in just four words: And the sun runs its course (mustaqarr) determined for it. That is His decree, the Exalted in Might, the All-Knowing (36:38).

In fact, mustaqarr here may mean a determined route in space, a fixed place of rest or dwelling, or a determined route in time. We are told that the sun has a specific orbit and that it moves toward a particular point in the universe. Our solar system, as we now know, is moving toward the constellation Lyra at an almost inconceivable speed (every second we come ten miles closer to that constellation, almost a million miles a day). We also are told that when the sun has finished its appointed task, it will abide by a command and come to rest.

Such words were spoken at a time when people generally believed that the sun made a daily circuit around the Earth.

• Another four-word inspiring and eloquent Qur’anic verse says that the universe is expanding: And the firmament: We constructed it with power and skill, and We are expanding it (51:47–48).

This verse reveals that the distance between celestial bodies is increasing, for the universe is expanding. In 1922, the astronomer Hubble claimed that all galaxies, except the five closest to Earth, are moving further into space at a speed directly proportional to their distance from Earth. Thus, a galaxy one million light-years away are moving away at a speed of 168 km/year, one-two million light-years away at twice that speed, and so on. Le Maître, a Belgian mathematician and priest, later proposed and developed the theory that the universe is expanding. No matter how we express this reality, the Qur’an clearly presents the reality of this expansion.

• The Qur’an indicates various laws of physics, such as attraction and repulsion, rotation and revolution in the universe: God raised the heavens without any pillars that you can see… (13:2)

All celestial bodies move in order, balance, and harmony. They are held and supported in this order by pillars invisible to our eyes. Some of these “pillars” are repulsion or centrifugal force: … He holds back the sky from falling on earth except by His leave… (22:65).

From this verse, we understand that the heavenly bodies may at any moment collapse on the Earth, but that the All-Mighty does not allow it. This is an instance of the universal obedience to His Word, which in the language of contemporary science is explained as a balance of centripetal and centrifugal forces.

• Qur’anic commentators have considered one verse as a reference to traveling to the moon, which is now a reality: By the moon’s fullness! You shall surely travel from stage to stage (84:18–19).

Some earlier commentators understood this verse figuratively, as a reference to one’s spiritual life considered as an ascent from one stage to the next, or as a general process of change from one state to another. Later on, Qur’anic interpreters tried to explain it in non-literal terms, for the literal meaning did not agree with what they “knew” about actually traveling such a distance. But in fact, the more appropriate sense of the words following the oath (By the moon!), given the verse’s immediate context, is that of really traveling to the moon, whether literally or figuratively.

• The Qur’anic account of the Earth’s geographical shape and change in that shape are particularly interesting: Do they not see how We gradually shrink the land from its outlying borders? Is it then they who will be victors? (21:44)

The reference to shrinking from its borders could relate to the now-known fact that the Earth is compressed at the poles, rather than to such earlier believed ideas as the erosion of mountains by wind and rain, of the sea-shores by the sea, or of the desert’s encroachment of cultivated lands.

At a time when people generally believed that the Earth was flat and stationary, the Qur’an explicitly and implicitly revealed in several verses that it is round. More unexpectedly still, it tells us that its precise shape is more like an ostrich egg than a sphere: After that, He shaped the earth like an egg, whence He caused to spring forth the water thereof, and the pasture thereof (79:30–32).

The Arabic verb daha means “to shape like an egg.” The derived noun dahia is still used to mean “an egg.” Some interpreters, who might have viewed it as contrary to what they “knew,” misunderstood the meaning as “stretched out,” perhaps fearing that the literal meaning might be difficult to understand and so misleading. Modern scientists have established that the Earth is shaped more like an egg than a perfect sphere, that there is a slight flattening around the poles and a slight curving around the equator.

• As a final example, consider what the Qur’an says about the sun and the moon: We have made the night and the day as two signs; the sign of the night We have obscured, while the sign of the day We have made to enlighten you… (17:12)

According to Ibn ‘Abbas, the sign of the night refers to the moon and the sign of the day to the sun. Therefore, from the words the sign of the night We have obscured, we understand that the moon once emitted light and that God took its light from it, thereby causing it to darken or become obscured. While the verse thus accurately recounts the moon’s past, it points to the future destiny of other heavenly bodies.

Many other Qur’anic verses are related to scientific facts. Their existence indicates that our quest for knowledge is a portion of Divine Mercy graciously bestowed upon us by our Creator. Indeed, Divine Mercy is one of the Qur’an’s names for itself, and all that it contains truth and knowledge is beyond our ability to relate or to hold in our minds.

We must remember, however, that while the Qur’an contains allusions to many scientific truths, it is not a science textbook. It is a book of guidance leading humanity to right belief and right action so that we may be worthy of Divine Mercy and Forgiveness. Muslims must ensure that the pursuit of scientific and other types of knowledge is guided by the light of the Qur’an, which so encourages and supports it, and not by the spirit of arrogance, insolence, and vainglory. The latter path, that of unbelievers, leads only to the mind’s desolation, our own degradation and that of the Earth, our temporary home entrusted to us by God.

7 notes · View notes

moishe-pipick · 5 years

Photo

Robert Fludd's illustration of man the microcosm within the universal macrocosm.

14 notes · View notes

didanawisgi · 5 years

Text

W. Kirk MacNulty, 32°

The symbols used in 18th-century Masonic tracing boards are references to the vast body of literature and philosophy which documents Renaissance thought.

Art: Frontispiece from Stephen Jones, Masonic Miscellanies (London: Vernor & Hood, 1797)

Masonic Tracing Boards are training devices. In the earliest days of speculative Masonry, the Master would sketch designs on the floor of the Lodge using chalk. Then he would talk about the drawing during the meeting. During the course of the 18th century, the drawings were transferred to "Tracing Boards" which are pictures, one per Degree, that encapsulate the symbols of each of the Degrees. The Boards to which we will refer are English.

Speculative Masonry started in the 1600s, and its symbols are references to that vast body of literature and philosophy which documents Renaissance thought. In the Renaissance, the dominant metaphysic was Judeo-Christian monotheism with an admixture of Classical thinking. Renaissance philosophers incorporated many Greek (particularly neo-Platonic) and Jewish mystical ideas into their orthodox Christianity. Some of these influences came from the Hermetica which had, itself, been a substantial influence in the formation of early Christian doctrines. Others came from Kabbalah, the mystical tradition of Judaism. This fusion of classical and Jewish philosophy is called the "Hermetic/Kabbalistic Tradition"; and after it had been interpreted in the context of orthodox Christian doctrine, it became the basis of Renaissance thinking. Speculative Masonry dates from the end of the Renaissance (the mid-17th century), and it is no surprise that Masonic symbolism reflects this tradition.

The First Degree Tracing Board, which looks at first glance like a collection of heterogeneous objects, is, I think, a representation of the entire Universe. It is also a picture of a human being standing in a landscape. Neither of these images is immediately obvious, but I think the ideas will become clear.

The central idea of Renaissance thought was the unity of the Universe and the consequent omnipresence of the Deity. This idea is represented by the "Ornaments of the Lodge." The fact that Masonry has gathered these three objects into a single group suggests that we consider them together. The Ornaments of the Lodge are the Blazing Star or Glory, the Checkered Pavement, and the Indented, Tessellated Border; all refer to the Deity. The Blazing Star or Glory is found in the Heavens at the center of the picture. It is a straightforward heraldic representation of the Deity. Look at the Great Seal of the United States on a dollar bill, and you will see the Deity represented there in the same manner. The Checkered Pavement represents the Deity as perceived in ordinary life. The light and dark squares represent paired opposites, a mixture of mercy and justice, reward and punishment, passion and analysis, vengeance and loving kindness. They also represent the human experience of life, light and dark, good and evil, ease and difficulty. But that is only how it is perceived. The squares are not the symbol; the Pavement is the symbol. The light and dark squares fit together with exact nicety to form the Pavement, a single thing, a unity. The whole is surrounded by the Tessellated Border which binds it into a single symbol. The Border binds not simply the squares, but the entire picture, into a unity.

The idea of duality occurs throughout the Board: from the black and white squares at the bottom to the Sun and Moon at the top. In the central area of the Board, duality is represented by two of the three columns; but here the third column introduces a new idea. The striking thing about these columns is that each is from a different Order of Architecture. In Masonic symbolism, they are assigned names: Wisdom to the Ionic Column in the middle, Strength to the Doric Column on the left, and Beauty to the Corinthian Column on the right. How shall we interpret these Columns and their names?

One of the major components of Renaissance thought was Kabbalah. The principal diagram which is used by Kabbalists to communicate their ideas is the "Tree of Life." The column on the right is called the "Column of Mercy," the active column. That on the left is called the "Column of Severity," the passive column. The central column is called the "Column of Consciousness." It is the column of equilibrium with the role of keeping the other two in balance. The three columns all terminate in (depend on) Divinity at the top of the central column. Referring to the columns on the First Degree Tracing Board , note that the Corinthian Pillar of Beauty is on the right; in the classical world the Corinthian Order was used for buildings dedicated to vigorous, expansive activities. The Doric Pillar of Strength is on the left; the Doric Order was used for buildings housing activities in which discipline, restraint, and stability were important. The Ionic Pillar of Wisdom is in the middle. The Ionic Order is recognized as an intermediate between the other two and was used for Temples to the rulers of the gods who coordinated the activities of the pantheon. The Three Pillars, like the Tree of Life, speak of a universe in which expansive and constraining forces are held in balance by a coordinating agency.

The Universe of the Renaissance philosophers consisted of "four worlds." The Kabbalistic representation of this idea is shown in the figure above by the four large circles denoting four "worlds." They are the "elemental" or physical world, the "celestial" world of the psyche or soul, the "supercelestial" world or spirit, and the Divine world. These same levels are represented on the First Degree tracing board pictured on the front inside cover of this issue. The Pavement represents the "elemental," physical world; the central part of the Board, including the columns and most of the symbols, represents the "celestial" world of the psyche or soul; the Heavens represent the "supercelestial" world of the spirit; and the Glory represents Divinity.

These ideas describe the "landscape." Where is the man?

Another important Renaissance concept was that of a Macrocosm (the universe as a whole) and a corresponding Microcosm (the human individual). The idea is that the universe and human beings are structured using the same principles (both being made "in the image of God"). Consider the Ladder. It extends from the Scripture on the Altar to the Glory which represents the Deity; and in the Masonic symbolism, it is said to be Jacob’s Ladder. We consider the ladder together with another symbol, the Point-within-a-Circle-Bounded-by-Two-Parallel-Lines, which is shown on the face of the Altar.

These symbols are discussed together because in many early Masonic drawings they appear together as if they have some connection. (See the illustration from Masonic Miscellanies, 1797, at the head of this article.) Consider the Two Parallel Lines first. They, like the Doric and Corinthian columns, represent paired opposites, active and passive qualities. In Masonic symbolism, they are associated with the Saints John; the Baptist’s Day is mid-summer, the Evangelist’s is mid-winter.

Now, this Point-within-a-Circle-Bounded-by-Two-Parallel-Lines, together with the Ladder and its three levels, reveals a pattern very similar to the three columns. There are three verticals, two of which, the Lines, relate to active and passive functions while the third, the Ladder between them, reaches to the heavens and provides the means "by which we hope to arrive there." The ladder has "three principal rounds" or levels, represented by Faith, Hope and Charity, which correspond to the three lower levels of the four-level Universe we observed earlier.

Both the Macrocosmic "Landscape" and the Microcosmic "Man" share the fourth level of Divinity, represented by the Blazing Star, or Glory. Taken together the Ladder and the Point-within-a-Circle-Bounded-by-Two- Parallel-Lines represent the human individual made "in the image of God," according to the same principles on which the Universe is based.

A Mason is sometimes called "a traveling man." One of the Masonic catechisms gives us an insight into this term. "Q. - Did you ever Travel? A. - My forefathers did. Q. - Where did they travel? A. - Due East and West. Q. - What was the object of their travels? A. - They traveled East in search of instruction, and West to propagate the knowledge they had gained." Notice the cardinal points of the compass on the Border of this Tracing Board; they define the East–West direction in Masonic terms, and, in doing so, they describe the nature of the journey to which the new Mason apprentices himself. That journey from West to East is represented, symbolically, by the progress through the Masonic Degrees; and it is, in fact, the ascent up Jacob’s Ladder—one of the "Principal Rounds" for each Degree.

The notion of a "mystical ascent" was part and parcel of the Hermetic/Kabbalistic Tradition. It is a devotional exercise during which the individual rises through the worlds of the soul and the spirit and at last finds himself experiencing the presence of Deity. Some of these ascents are deeply Christian in their character. In De Occulta Philosophia, Agrippa "rises through the three worlds, the elemental world, the celestial world, the supercelestial world...where he is in contact with angels, where the Trinity is proved, ... the Hebrew names of God are listed, though the Name of Jesus is now the most powerful of all Names." (Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, London, RKP, 1979, p.63)

The Second Degree Tracing Board shows a familiar pattern: two columns which have opposite characteristics, and between them a staircase, a form of ladder. We cannot investigate this symbol here because of space limitations (see Heredom, vol. 5, 1996, for a fuller explication), but we know we are to climb this staircase. The picture summarizes the Renaissance idea of the approach to Deity as an interior journey.

On the Third Degree Tracing Board, the grave probably does not refer to physical death. During the Renaissance there was much discussion about "the Fall of man" and its effect. "The Fall" seems to refer to some event by which human beings, who were at one time conscious of the Divine Presence, lost that consciousness. After "the Fall," ordinary human life, as we live it on a day-to-day basis, is "like death" when compared to human potential and to a life lived in the conscious awareness of Divine presence. The grave suggests such a "death" to be our present state. The acacia growing at the top of the grave suggests that there is a spark of life which can be encouraged to grow and refers to the possibility of regaining our original Divine connection.

The view of the Temple in the center of the Third Degree Board shows "King Solomon’s Porch," the entrance to the "Holy of Holies." The veil is drawn back a little offering a glimpse into that chamber where the Deity was said to reside. This suggests that at the end of the journey from West to East some process analogous to death enables the individual to experience the Divine presence. After this process has occurred, he lives once more at his full potential. Again, I think that this refers neither to a resurrection after physical death nor to a life after physical death; both of which are the domain of religion, not Masonry. Rather, it refers to a psychological/spiritual process which can occur, if it be God’s will, within any devout individual who seeks it earnestly and which I believe it to be the business of Freemasonry to encourage. After all, we claim to be Freemasons, and this is that Truth, the knowing of which "make[s] you free."

This article has been shortened by the author from the original published in Heredom, Vol. 5, 1996.

#herodom #tracing board #lost keys of freemasonry

5 notes · View notes

ogygia · 6 years

Text

What the fuck is the LBRP?: A guide

Your Reddit occultist friends have mentioned it, it’s popping up on all these Tumblr posts about banishing and stuff, but you still haven’t the foggiest clue: what the fuck is the LBRP?

Fret not: here’s a handy guide. Warning: long post ahead!

Disclaimer: This guide represents the sum total of roughly thirteen years of on-and-off experience with the ritual and my own study and understanding of the Kabbalah and the Golden Dawn system, but emphasis is on the words my own. There will be points that I’m sure other occultists will disagree on, but I’m of the conviction that the principles underlying my understanding of the ritual are unlikely to be controversial among most ceremonial magicians.

So:

What the fuck is the LBRP?

‘LBRP’ stands for the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, and is a classic ritual that almost every occultist will come across at some point after they have grown out of their early Silver RavenWolf years. 80s and 90s kids are likely to have first encountered it in that seminal classic Modern Magick, probably in the earlier blue edition that had that ridiculous illustration of a fantastically-robed man drawing a massive blue pentagram before him.

What the fuck is a pentagram?

It’s a five-pointed star as it would look if you drew it with five straight lines (rather than going around the edges and leaving the insides empty).

It’s a symbol commonly associated with modern witchcraft, but it was already important in early Greek thought.

Most occultists are likely to have been introduced to the LBRP as a ‘banishing ritual’ (mainly because that is literally what it is called), or been told that it is the first thing they should learn if they want to learn magick. It is my opinion that this is completely bullshit.

So how the fuck do you do the LBRP?

I’m tempted to link you to Let Me Google That For You, but I’m feeling charitable so I’ll quote the ritual instructions in full from the First Knowledge Lecture, the secret (ooooh) material given to Neophytes in the Golden Dawn system—

Wait, the Golden Dawn?

Yes, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Late Victorian magical organisation based on the Freemasons, did fancy rituals and wore ridiculous Egyptian-inspired headgear and shit. Also a bunch of massive nerds who were obsessed with astrology, the Tarot and the Kabbalah and trying to find ways of corresponding all these different symbol systems with each other to create one gigantic, hopefully organised matrix of magical ideas and symbols that would allow them to explain – and magically manipulate – existence and the cosmos.

We’re not talking science here, of course: we’re talking spirituality. Not that they’re mutually exclusive.

Anyway, you interrupted me. Here’s the ritual, according to these folks:

The Qabalistic Cross And Lesser Ritual Of The Pentagram 1. Touching the forehead, say Ateh (Thou art) 2. Touching the breast, say Malkuth (The Kingdom) 4. Touching the right shoulder, say ve-Geburah. (And The Power) 5. Touching the left shoulder, say ve-Gedulah. (And the Glory) 6. Place the two palms of the hands together upon the breast, and say le-Olahm (Forever). 7. Fingers pointing up, say Amen. 8. Advance to the East, trace the Pentagram with the proper weapon (Wand to invoke, Dagger to banish). Say (i.e., vibrate) Yod He Vau He - imagining that your voice carried forward to the East of the Universe. 9. Turning to the South, the same, but say Adonai 10. Turning to the West, the same, but say Eheieh 11. Turning to the North, the same, but say Agla 12. Return to the East, completing the Circle, extend the arms in the form of a Cross, and say: 13. Before me Raphael; 14. Behind me Gabriel; 15. On my right hand, Michael; 16. On my left hand, Auriel; 17. Before me flames the Pentagram, 18. And in the Column shines the Six-rayed Star. 19-24. Repeat 1 through 6, the Qabalistic Cross.

What in the actual fuck—

Yeah. Riveting.

But this will help me banish stuff, right?

Uh, yes, and no.

The problem with the LBRP is that it’s become a victim of its own success. Before the LBRP there was no single ritual that had instructions as clearly given as this one (or so it appeared, anyway), or one that had such a clear, universal purpose as ‘banishing’. When Israel Regardie published this material it took off in a way that I’m not even sure the Golden Dawn themselves would’ve expected.

A number of things, I suspect, make the LBRP immediately appealing to many newcomers: the safety aspect, which targets the fear a lot of people coming to the occult bring with them; the Judeo-Christian names, which while putting a lot of people off, offers a way in for those who still fear that magick might be ‘Satanic’; and also its simplicity, in that it merely requires the memorising of words and gestures and no major preparation, either in the way of extensive fasts, elaborate tools or space that no one, especially not avocado-toting millennials like me, could possibly afford.

But this is where the problem lies: the dissemination of the LBRP beyond its Golden Dawn context means a lot of people are doing the ritual without realising they’re tapping into a specific current. When you employ a specific symbol set, you enter into the current – the wider symbol set – represented by that system. The LBRP is steeped in the Golden Dawn current, and it is the nexus of important Hermetic and Kabbalistic principles. To describe it merely as a ‘banishing’ ritual – and to use it as such – is like saying that flying to the moon on a rocket is just a form of transport. There’s a lot more going on here.

So what the fuck does the LBRP actually do?

It ‘banishes’, yes. But more specifically, it’s a ritual that tunes into your most fundamental level of existence, and then creates what is essentially a magical vacuum, a kind of ‘empty space’, within it. It also aligns you within a very specific tradition of thought known as Hermeticism, which finds its origins in late antique philosophy and a fusion of Greco-Egyptian thought.

Fundamental to Hermeticism is the notion of ‘As above, so below’ (you’ve probably heard of this). I’m not paid enough to teach you Neoplatonic philosophy here (you can Google that shit), but essentially this is the idea that there is a greater spiritual plane (the macrocosm) that ‘mirrors’ the lesser, more tangible realm of existence (microcosm), and vice versa. The LBRP, performed correctly, will situate you neatly at the point of interaction between the macrocosm and the microcosm.

This is why the LBRP isn’t just a banishing ritual. I quote Crowley:

Those who regard this ritual as a mere device to invoke or banish spirits, are unworthy to possess it. Properly understood, it is the Medicine of Metals and the Stone of the Wise.

How the hell does all that work?

Where am I getting all of this from? This is where analysing the ritual itself, especially in Golden Dawn terms, can help.

To begin with, you’ll notice that the Knowledge Lecture provides two options for how to draw the Pentagram (that’ll be a five-pointed star in case you’re wondering) in Step 8:

Invoking Pentagram

Banishing Pentagram

The commonly described LBRP utilises the second pentagram – because it is the banishing one, duh. But where do these pentagrams come from?

For that, we turn to Aleister Crowley, that shit-head every pearl-clutching witchblr person likes to hate. Don’t get me wrong, Aleister Crowley was a shit-head. But he was also well-travelled (he had a lot of money) and well-read (he probably read more widely than most occultists on this website ever will) and, as his diaries show, an incredibly hard-working magician (though I suppose you’ll have time to do that if Daddy’s paying for everything else).

In Liber O, his treatise on basic practical work for a Probationer of the A.’.A.’., his magical teaching order, Crowley outlines the instructions for performing the Greater Ritual of the Pentagram, an advanced version of the Lesser ritual. Like Regardie, he gave no fucks about his oaths to secrecy, and republished a lot of material that was secret to the Golden Dawn. We see diagrams showing how the pentagrams are to be drawn in the GRP – and, aha, they’re drawn differently depending on which element you’re manipulating!

As you can see, the pentagrams used in the LBRP are the Earth pentagrams (ignore the Hebrew God name in this instance: that’s a can of worms I’m not opening right now).

In the Golden Dawn scheme of things the elements are hierarchically arranged from highest to lowest as follows: Fire, Air, Water and Earth. This isn’t necessarily a hierarchy of superiority or value; in fact, they don’t in a sense correspond literally to fire, air, water and earth. Instead, think of them as broad labels for levels of spiritual manifestation. Fire is spirit in its “purest” form (think of how fire flashes and shines but has no real ‘bodily’ presence); Air ‘exists’, but you can only vaguely feel its body; Water is tangible, but it flows and moves and fills; while Earth is the most solid of these. In the same sense, we exist across these levels, too, from our highest spiritual selves to our solid existence in the physical realm.

The Kabbalists call these four levels Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah and Assiah, but I’m guessing you’re not here for the fancy words.

Anyway, what the LBRP does is to tune into our most basic level of existence – the Earth level, where our body and our ego resides – and clear it of any extraneous influences. Traditionally, after the pentagram is traced in each quarter, you don’t just say the name; you project it through the pentagram using what is called the Sign of the Enterer, followed by what is called the Sign of Silence. The Knowledge Lecture itself recommends that

the Banishing Ritual can be used to get rid of obsessing or disturbing thoughts. Give a mental image to your obsession and imagine it formulated before you. Project it out of your aura with the Saluting Sign of a Neophyte, and when it is away about three feet prevent its return with the Sign of Silence.

Thus at each quarter you are essentially opening up a portal to an elemental realm, and then casting the sum total of that element’s influence in your life back into the infinite. The Sign of Silence seals off the process and ensures those influences don’t return.

After having completely cleared off every element’s influence at your fundamental level of existence, you invoke the archangels at each quarter not just to ‘protect’ the space you’ve cleared, but also to ensure that you don’t suffocate in the vacuum. Having got rid of everything, you now restore balance in your sphere by summoning the positive and pure elemental energies of the archangels.

Tangibly, this can manifest itself in many ways: a lot of occultists have found that performing the ritual regularly initiates some serious shifts in their everyday life. Unhealthy excesses begin to make their negative effects shown, imbalances dramatically correct themselves and magicians often find themselves forced to make decisions about key aspects of their lives. Remember: the ritual primarily functions at the most basic level of manifestation – and that includes your everyday life.

Following the invocation of the archangels, you then proclaim yourself at the point of interaction between the macrocosm and the microcosm. This is signified by Steps 17-18, when you say, ‘Before me flames the Pentagram, and in the Column shines the Six-rayed Star.’ The Pentagram signifies the microcosm, with its five points corresponding to the five basic elements (the four classical ones plus Spirit); the Hexagram signifies the macrocosm, with its six points corresponding to the planets apart from the Sun, which is at its centre (that’s another can of worms I’m not opening now).

This is magically significant, because it is a declaration of your spiritual independence and power, and positions you to receive and activate the higher energies of the cosmos.

That sounds pretty intense.

It is. But my point is that by performing this ritual, you superimpose the Hermetic / Golden Dawn view of the world onto yourself, which is why anyone who tells you the LBRP is just a banishing ritual is completely missing the point. And anyone who tells you that the LBRP is the first thing every magician should learn is ignoring the fact that you may not even be interested in Hermeticism (even if it is the foundation of modern Western occultism).

What I’m saying is, you do not need to waste your time with this ritual if you have no interest in the Golden Dawn system, or occultism as it is espoused by old dead white men. No point introducing its energies into your life if you want nothing to do with the rest of it.

On the other hand, if you’re keen on taking a splash into magick and don’t know where to start, and you’re willing to go where the magick takes you, the LBRP is, frankly speaking, not a bad place to begin.

Happy Pentagramming.

Wait, I’ve got some more questions—

I have a few other things I’d like to address re: the LBRP, but I’ll do that in an appendix to this post. This guide is long enough as it is, and God knows you Tumblr slobs have the attention span of a dead goldfish.

Before you @ me, I count myself among you lot. Why the hell do you think I’m still here?

#lbrp #lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram #rituals #guides #ceremonial magick #golden dawn #thelema

643 notes · View notes

wisdomrays · 2 years

Text

Does the Qur'an Allude to Scientific Developments?: Part 2

Examples

One way the Qur'an hints of technological advances and marks their final development is by mentioning the Prophets' miracles.

• It encourages us to fly in the air and alludes implicitly to the fact that one day we will make spaceships and aircraft: And to Solomon (We subjugated) the wind; its morning course was a month's journey, and its evening course was a month's journey (34:12).

• It invites us to learn how to cure every illness: (Jesus said): I also heal the blind and the leper, and bring to life the dead, by the leave of God (3:49), and hints that one day we will be so successful that people will find it hard to believe that they will actually die.

• The verse: Said he who possessed knowledge of the Book: "I will bring it (the throne of the Queen of Saba') to you (to Solomon in Jerusalem) before ever your glance returns to you" (27:40), foretells that one day images or even physical items will be transmitted instantly through knowledge of the Divine Book of the Universe, just as those who have knowledge of the Book of Divine Revelation can bring things from a long distance in the blink of an eye.

• The Qur'an symbolically informs us that it might be possible to identify a murderer by some cells taken from his body at the time of death by narrating that a murderer was revealed in the time of Prophet Moses, upon him be peace, by smiting the slain man with part of a cow that God Almighty ordered the Children of Israel slaughter (2:67-73).

Below are further examples to illustrate the Qur'an's allusions to scientific facts and developments.

• The Creator, Who is not bound by the human concept of time, informs us that, in a general sense, the future will be the age of knowledge and information, as well as an age of faith and belief: Soon We shall show them Our signs in the outer world and in their own souls, until it becomes manifest to them that this is truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses all things? (41:53).

From the very early days of Islam, Sufis have interpreted this verse as a sign and assurance of the spiritual wisdom for which they strive. But if the verse is read in the context of scientific progress, a progress significantly initiated and advanced by Muslims, the mere fact of the verse will be seen to be a miracle.

Everything within the fold of human thinking and research affirms the Creator's Oneness, as the true nature and interrelationship of microcosm and macrocosm come to be further disclosed and better understood. When we see hundreds of books on this point, we understand that what was Divinely revealed is near at hand. Even now we feel that we shall soon hear and even understand testimonies and praises to God through thousands of nature's tongues:

The seven heavens and the Earth, and all things therein, de-clare His Glory. There is not a thing but celebrates His praise. And yet you do not understand how they declare His Glory. Truly He is Oft-Forbearing, Most Forgiving. (17:44)

We already understand something of this verse's import. The smallest atoms as well as the largest nebu-lae speak to us, in the language of their being, of their submission to the One God and so glorify Him. However, those who can listen to and understand this universal praise are very few.

• What the Qur'an reveals about the embryo's formation and developmental phases in the uterus is striking. Consider the following:

O mankind! If you have a doubt about the Resurrection, (con-sider) that We created you out of dust, then out of sperm, then out of a leechlike cloth, then out of a lump of flesh, partly formed and partly unformed, in order that We may manifest (what We will) to you. (22:5)

In another verse, this development is explained in greater detail, and the distinct phases are emphasized more clearly:

Man We created from a quintessence (of clay). Then We placed him as (a drop of) sperm in a place of rest, firmly fixed. Then we made the sperm into a clot of congealed blood. Then of that clot We made a lump (embryo); then we made out of that lump bones and clothed the bones with flesh. Then We de-veloped out of it a new (distinct, individual) creature. (23:12–14)

• What the Qur'an says about milk and its production is as brilliant as the drink itself, and our understanding of it has brought us great benefits: And verily in cattle (too) will you find an instructive sign. From what is from their bodies, between excretions and blood, We produce, for your drink, milk, pure and agreeable to those who drink it (16:66).

The Qur'an narrates the process in remarkable detail: part-digestion and absorption of what is ingested as food, and then a second process and refinement in the glands. Milk is a wholesome and agreeable source of human nourishment, and yet its owner rejects it as use-less.

• The Qur'an reveals that all things are created in pairs: Glory be to God, who created in pairs all things, of what the earth produces, of themselves, and of which they have no knowledge (36:36).

Everything that exists has counterpart, whether opposite or complementary. The complementarity of human, animal, and certain plant genders has long been known. But what about the pairs of things of which we have no knowledge? This may refer to a whole range of entities, inanimate as well as animate. In the subtle forces and principles of nature within (and among) animate or inanimate entities, there are many kinds of pairs. All things, as our modern instruments confirm, occur in twos.

• The Qur'an recounts, in its own unique idiom, the first creation of the world and its living inhabitants: Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as a single mass), before We clove them asunder? We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe? (21:30).

This meaning of this verse is clear, and should not be obscured with hypotheses as to whether the primary material in creation is an ether or a large cloud, a huge nebula or a mass of hot gas, or something else. The Qur'an states that every living thing was created of wa-ter. Whether the water itself was caused by gases and vapors rising from the ground, condensing, and then returning as rain to form seas and prepare a suitable environment for life, or by some other process, is relatively unimportant.

The verse explicitly presents the universe as a single miracle of creation. Each thing in it is an integral part of that miracle, and contains signs that prove its claim. Everything is interconnected, just like the leaves of a massive tree—they are all different, but resemble each other and are linked to a common root. The verse also emphasizes water's vitality and significance, for it constitutes three-fourths of the body mass of most liv-ing creatures.

1 note · View note

ornadean · 3 years

Text

makam

Wiki: “The Turkish makam os a system of melody types used in Turkish classical music and Turkish folk music. It provides a complex set of rules for composing and performance. Each makam specifies a unique intervalic structure (cinsler) and melodic development (seyir). Whether a fixed composition (beste, şarkı, peşrev, âyin, etc) or a spontaneous composition (gazel, tasim, recitation of Kuran-i Kerim, Mevlid, etc.) all attempt to follow the melody type. The rhythmic counterpart of makam in Turkish musik is usul.

Yöre: Maqam in Music as a Concept, Scale and Penomenon

Its Arabic meaning is a rank or a place in a scale o quality or value (269)

Maqam is also defined musically within two approaches: the first apporach is a melodic pattern, whereas the other apprach is a scale (270)

Because maqam music spreads from ear to ear and is based on experience within the framework of a master and an apprentice relationship called meşk (meshq). It is the traditional oral and experiental teaching method of maqam music. The Western style maqam theories show that maqam is a scale, but traditional maqam music theory explains that maqam is a melodic cycle of the pitches and melodic nuclei. This situation is a dilemma between acstractness and concretness of maqam. (271)

Definition aus der “Encyclopaedia Britannica” (1977): “In Islamic music, a set of pitches and of characteristic melodic elements or motives, and traditional patterns o their use forming a system for the melodic and tonal constraction of performances”. The definition includes concepts such as melodic motives, patterns, construction and a set o pitches which are the basic features of maqam and the deinition does not include scale concept. The framework of maqam is explained by a set of pitches instead of scale concept. Even if maqam-s are written symbolically asa scale accroding to the WEstern style maqam music theore, they should be explained as a melodic pattern in accordance with performance (273) FRAGE: Was ist der Unterschied zwischen “scale” und “set of pitches”?

Therefore, maqam-s are a combination and a ccyle of maqam nuclei. This makes each maqam a phenomenon. [...] If the scale of a maqam is not performed through melodies, then the maqam does not occur. (273)

??? Even if a maqam is exhibited within a musical form and a rhythmic pattern, the tonal-spatial component is not fixed, but the rhythmic-temporal organization is fixed owing to performers’ imrpovised ornamentation. (274)???

Also, when maqam is evaluated penomenologically, there are some concepts that generate maqam such as melodic pattern, model, group, structure, procedure, phrase, matric and combination of melodic nuclei. These eight concepts can be accepted as the codes of maqam within the framwork of semiology and musiculogy. (282)

There aer six features regarding the maqam pehomenon hich emerged in this study: improvised ornamentation (vibration, glissando and appoggiatura), melodic contour, unfixed pitches, transposed timbres, modulation and alteration. [...] So all of the findings show that maqam is a nonlinear phenomenon. (282)

Ertan: Cycles and Peripheries: An Ottoman “Kitâb- el-Edvâr”

One major aspect with such primarily ora traditions as Turkish art music was loyalt: the ancestors as well as to the ideological principles and presuppositions that united different generations. The continuity of tradition constituted the basis of the meşk tradition of conveying musical knowledge through teacher-student relationship, which lasted from about the fifteenth [if not earliert] to early twentieth century. (36) → »trags weiter« usw., Funktion von Reim; Vielleicht meine Gedichte hinzufügen

As recent as teh 1930s Ibnülemin M. K. Inal urged hattats (calligraphers) and composers in his Hoş Sadâ (published in 1958) primarily so serve science and not personal interests, commenting that »Science does not serve worldly pleasures and comforts (keyf). Pleasure has an bligation towards science«. The poetic text exemplified by Edvârs sugests not ony the acts of learning but also of contemplation. The Ikhwân aimed »to release the bonds of the reader's soul by awakening in him the knowledge that man will progess beyond material experience«.

Clasical Ottoman verse functioned like a gate or a channel through which life and art could »flow«, serving as a reservoir of text, signification, illustration, and knowledge. Within this literary tradition, which was fully established by the latter half of the fifteenth century, the divân poetry became »the poem-text sung by a whole culture – centuries in the making, the labor of many minds«. Further, the manzum (versified) style with the rythmic aspect of aruz facilitated the process of learning, sustaining the cultural »memory«. Poetry and music were particularly regardes as Divine art forms, often to be contemplated with respect to cosmological theories. Victoria Roew Holbrook notes that Ottoman poetry »in general assumes a distinction between 'this world' and 'that,' this temporal world and that divine eternity … [and] the structure of teh universe, or macrocosm, corresponds to that of the human microcosm«. (36-37) → Literatur auschecken → Inwiefern geht es um »Realisierung« des Gedichts im Sprechen oder Lesen? → Meine eigene Erfahrung »les doch mal pathetischer«; vielleicht lassen sich ja interessante Beispiele bei lyrikline finden, bzw. tatsächlich Noor?

Mirroring the nature of content of Edvârs, »Truth«, in the East, tends to be presented not through the pressure of having to produce original or individualistic work, buth rather as a collective and egalitarian service that prioritizes the continuity of tradition. Such interpretations often draw on both the intuitive aspects and the formalistic properties as the internatl »order« within music becomes a metaphor for a possible reconciliation o the mundane and celestial realms. Although the argument can be made that music should and does only signify itself, in this context, it is not regarded as something absolute but as a connective medium and a set of meanings revisited through and for the collective. In a fifteenth-century Ottoman music treatise the relationship between music and other firelds is mirrored through a tradition of poetics without »quantifying« or translating musical meaning into a definitive logical discourse; (49-50) NOTIZ: Mediation of Ornament ??

This is significant, particularly because whether it is the dervish, the musician or the scribe/author, the subject becomes just another medium, a mere »object«. The passage from being the subject to being an object creates a possible link between the two distinct worlds of »this« and the other« (51)

0 notes

2whatcom-blog · 5 years

Text

The Thoughts of Leonardo Da Vinci

Throughout the centuries, every era has interpreted Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), discovering him to be remarkably trendy. On the 500th anniversary of his dying (Might 2, 2019) we are able to think about Leonardo's that means in our period. Our elementary nature as human beings has not modified in 500 years, however our surroundings has remodeled at a rare fee, together with our views on his accomplishments--and our personal. THE NATURE OF GENIUS Leonardo is a genius and a potent image of the "universal man" due to the breadth of his pursuits within the arts, science and expertise, spanning disciplines from chemistry (he found acetone) to astronomy (he found the lumen cinereum of the moon) to math (he found the middle of gravity of a pyramid) to working with plastics. Genius takes many varieties, and in Leonardo's case we acknowledge his limitations. He was defensive about his lack of formal training; he known as himself "omo sanza lettere" (a person with out letters). He had bother with primary arithmetic operations, and his Latin abilities have been weak. He absolutely wouldn't have carried out properly in a contemporary faculty system, and his IQ might need been examined as low. (I don't imagine he can or ought to be recognized with any situation akin to autism spectrum dysfunction or attention-deficit/hyperactivity dysfunction.) Many individuals marvel if there may very well be a genius like Leonardo immediately, or what an individual of his disposition would do. Maybe there can't be one other like him as a result of immediately's world requires super specialization. Many people are in fields that demand interdisciplinary considering. However few scientists, physicians, poets or politicians immediately are known as geniuses. A UNIFIED VISION OF NATURE'S LAWS Leonardo's science was grounded within the Aristotelian world as formed by 18 centuries of interpreters. He developed a system of what he known as the 4 powers of nature: motion, weight, drive and percussion. Though he struggled to outline these ideas, and lots of the concepts are archaic, it's telling that he developed a coherent mannequin for all pure phenomena starting from the macrocosm (e.g., geological forces that result in the formation of rivers and oceans) to the microcosm (e.g., human anatomy). I imagine he was enthusiastic about his conception of the 4 powers and the way they knowledgeable his artwork and science. We're on the same form of path immediately, looking for the grand unification of the legal guidelines of physics as we research pure phenomena from subatomic particles to the historical past of the universe. Few of us prolong this try at unification to the humanities as properly. VISUALIZED KNOWLEDGE To Leonardo, imaginative and prescient is the noblest of the senses and of paramount significance, and his ardour for imaginative and prescient was excessive. "The eye is the window of the human body through which the soul views and enjoys the beauties of the world. Because of it, the soul is content in its human prison, and without it this human prison is its torment" he writes in his Paragone (comparability of the humanities). He emphasised methods to visualise information and he pioneered anatomical illustration. To Leonardo, portray was a science, and the inventive act of portray is beneficial to visualise the world. As an anatomist and physiologist he determined at one level that the sense of imaginative and prescient is so essential that it should be mediated by its personal mind area, the "imprensiva." Seeing additionally has the that means of paying consideration, and Leonardo did this with beautiful endurance. He would strike a dusty desk and describe the sample by which the mud settled once more. He carried out repeated dissections of the physique, and when his observations conflicted with these of his authorities, he was generally in a position to liberate himself and pioneer unique discoveries. FAITH IN EXPERIENCE Leonardo was most snug counting on his senses as the idea of significant expertise. He summarizes his angle in regards to the surety of science. "To me it seems that those sciences are vain and full of error which are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, firsthand experience which in its origins, or means, or end has passed through one of the five senses. And if we doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to these senses such as the existence of god or of the soul or similar things over which there is always dispute and contention," he writes in his Treatise on Portray. For Leonardo, this religion in expertise was largely visible. Within the 21st century we perceive we can not derive all information from sensory expertise, and lots of us finding out genomes or in any other case utilizing computer systems have encountered the bounds of empiricism. Confronted with immediately's world, little question Leonardo would have been sensible at visualizing info. INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE Leonardo's considering was interdisciplinary. When he injected wax into the mind or into the guts to make casts of the inside workings of the physique, he was borrowing the "lost wax" approach acquainted to sculptors. When he studied friction and invented curler bearings and ball bearings he reasoned that frictional resistance differs in accordance with the character of the surfaces involved, and will increase in direct proportion to load, and he even estimated (for the primary time) a coefficient of friction. However he went additional to comprehend its relevance not simply to machines however to the actions of tendons over bones; to the creation of warmth by the guts; and to the manufacturing of voice by the friction of air on the vocal cords. CREATIVITY IN SCIENCE AND ART Creativity is productiveness marked by creativeness. Creativity is as primary to artwork as to science. We will be inventive as lecturers, as college students, as writers and readers. We are able to admire the numerous aspects of Leonardo's creativity, and it could actually encourage us immediately. Leonardo mixed science, artwork and engineering in a novel method. In his time "scientia" referred to information whereas"ars" referred to guide proficiency. The trendy distinction between the sciences and humanities, famously described by C.P. Snow, didn't exist because it does immediately. Leonardo was properly positioned as an artist to imagine the mission of a scientist. For Leonardo, the artist's inventive, noble goal is to depict the pure world. The artist should perceive all the world as a scientist would. FULFILLMENT OF HUMAN POTENTIAL At present we are able to admire all that Leonardo completed, in addition to his many failures, seeing somebody who fulfilled his potential in a novel method. He was appreciated as a rare artist in his personal lifetime, and his admirers had a way that his explorations of the worlds of science and engineering have been distinctive. He has impressed generations for 500 years, with our appreciation rising prior to now century as we have now been in a position to interpret his writings. As ever-increasing entry to info and expertise shapes immediately's world, we as a society could mirror on Leonardo's values of creativity, curiosity, expertise and realizing learn how to see. We admire his values, and we could marvel how they match into modern society. I'm not certain he would have thrived. We are able to additionally marvel how his values may assist every of us attempt to fulfill our personal potential; from this standpoint, tens of millions of us are impressed by his life's journey. Read the full article

#2what.com #art #creativity #experience #leonardo #leonardo’s #science #senses

0 notes

triste-le-roy · 7 years

Photo

“Man the Microcosm within the Universal Macrocosm” from Utriusque Cosmi Metaphysica, Physica Atque Technica Historia (written and illustrated by Robert Fludd, 1617 CE).

(reblogged from Chaosophia218)

#man the microcosm #universal macrocosm #robert fludd #collin colsher #occult #heremeticism #magick #magic #man #human

92 notes · View notes

myreadingsshannonreid · 4 years

Text

Reading three week one

The

Sixth

Sense

The Meaning of Atmosphere and Mood

Juhani Pallasmaa

Through its blinkered emphasis on visual form and function, has modernity divorced us from our sense of belonging to the cosmos? What, then, is the secret of creating architecture

that envelops and inspires us? As scientific research increasingly favours the point of view that our unconscious – as opposed to detailed – perception has higher existential value, Helsinki-based architect and professor emeritus Juhani Pallasmaa argues that peripheral vision is key. Only through engagement with this can architects trigger what could be described as our sixth sense – the atmospheric.

126

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Interior of a Great House: The Drawing Room, East Cowes Castle,

c 1830

Turner’s atmospheric interior pulls the viewer into the embrace of the space.

Whether people are conscious of it or not, they actually derive countenance and sustenance from the ‘atmosphere’ of the things they live in or with. They are rooted in them just as a plant is in the soil in which it is planted.

— Frank Lloyd Wright, 19541

Why do we identify with and feel a strong emotional attachment to certain spaces and places, while others leave us cold, or even frightened? Why do we feel like insiders and participants in some spaces, whereas in others we experience alienation and ‘existential outsideness’?2 Is this not because the settings of the first type embrace and stimulate us, make us surrender ourselves to them, and feel protected and sensually nourished, strengthening our sense of reality, belonging and self; whereas alienating and disturbing settings weaken our sense of being?

Guest-editor Matias del Campo introduces this 3 with the following: ‘Instead of perpetuating the techno mantra of computational design, this issue of 3 strives to examine the characteristics of contemporary architectural production in terms of their ability to evoke mood, radiate atmospheric conditions and portray phenomenological traits of the sensual as well as the actual.’ From this point of departure I have chosen to give certain historical and biological perspectives in order to frame the notions of mood and atmosphere in an experientially meaningful context. It is evident that modern and contemporary architectures have turned a blind eye to many of the fundamental sensory and mental issues concerning our relationships with physical settings, both ‘natural’ and man-made. Through modernity, the art of building has gradually focused on the technical, formal and aesthetic concerns of architecture instead of cultivating its inherent relational and mediating characteristics.

Harmony as an Architectural Aspiration

Resonance with the cosmos and a distinct proportional tuning were essential qualities of architecture from antiquity until the instrumentalised and aestheticised construction of the industrial era. The fundamental task of architecture was to create a correspondence between the

127

Tuning the world – harmony of numbers in music and architecture

Pythagoras (570–495 BC) established the relations between number ratios

and sound frequencies.

This woodcut shows him experimenting with bells, water glasses, stretched cords and various-sized pipes. His Hebrew counterpart, Jubal, uses weighted hammers on an anvil. From F Gafuro, Theorica musice, 1472.

Since the beginning of modernity, architectural theory, education and practice have primarily been concerned with the expressive qualities of form and space.

Aulis Blomstedt, Study of Pythagorean intervals applied

to the human scale, undated, late 1950s

Blomstedt connected visual and musical harmonies in

a system of numbers in accordance with Pythagorean principles. He concluded his meticulous studies in the early 1960s in a proportional system that he entitled Canon 60.

128

Jaakko Klemetinpoika Leppänen, Petäjävesi Church, Petäjävesi, Finland, 1764

The intoxicating and haptic atmosphere of an all-wood space.

microcosm of the human realm and the macrocosm of the universe. This was sought through proportionality based on small natural numbers following Pythagorean harmonics. The Renaissance also introduced the competing proportional ideal of the Golden Section. But while during the modern era only a handful of scholars and architects, such as Hans Kayser, Rudolph Schindler, Le Corbusier and Aulis Blomstedt, were interested in proportional harmony as a means of assuring an experiential coherence of architectural works, similar to musical tuning, in today’s consumerist and utilitarian society any aspiration for harmonic attunement of a larger context, or inner harmonic cohesion within the architectural work itself, has been entirely abandoned.3

Since the beginning of modernity, architectural theory, education and practice have primarily been concerned with the expressive qualities of form and space. Form and formal expression have even become synonymous with modernity.

This orientation favours focused vision and the Gestalt principles described in psychological literature. Le Corbusier’s credo ‘Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light’, illustrates this visual and formal orientation.4 Studies on vision have been primarily interested in focused perception and static gaze, which, however, are exceptional conditions in the lived reality. It is evident that focused vision necessarily implies outsideness in relation to what is seen. Thus, the fundamental experience of being embraced by space necessarily calls for diffuse and peripheral perception in motion.

It is this omnidirectional, multisensory, embodied and emotive encounter with space and place that makes us insiders and participants. I suggest, therefore, that it is the biased focusing on visual form that is responsible for the weak atmospheric quality and sense of interiority in much contemporary architecture. Architects in the modern era have considered ambiences, feelings and moods as something naive, romantic and entertaining instead of regarding such experiences as necessary constituents of environmental quality. Indeed, it is only recently that atmosphere, mood and attunement have become part of modern architectural theory and discourse.5 Modern thinking

129

has been interested in phenomena that can be consciously observed and rationally analysed, but the experience of mood and feeling does not arise from directed, focused and conscious attention.

Mood seeps into our mental constitution in an unnoticed and unstructured manner, in

the same way that we feel temperature, humidity or the smell of the air, unintentionally and in an embodied manner.

Altogether, mood is closer to an embodied haptic sensation than to an external visual percept.

The atmospheric paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner, the Impressionists and Abstract Expressionists evoke strong sensations of interiority, tactility and the feel of the skin. The art forms of painting, cinema, literature and theatre, and especially music, have been more aware of the significance of atmosphere, feeling and mood than architects. Some time ago I asked a Finnish composer and a pianist6 about the role of atmospheres in their music. Smiling enigmatically, both answered: ‘Music

is all atmosphere.’ Is this not why music is used in films to create and heighten moods, or to evoke specific tunings and desires in commercial settings? A master novelist’s skill as well as that of the film or theatre director is likewise to evoke, articulate and sustain specific moods in order to create the dramatic flow and continuum of the narrative. Should this not also be the task of the architect?

Visual Elementarism and Embodied Understanding

Modernism has favoured an elementarist view where entities are assumed to arise from elementary units and percepts. However, when we study our perceptions and experiences critically, we seem to be perceiving essences of complex multisensory entities such as the characteristics of spaces, places, landscapes and urban settings in an instant. These perceptions take place even quicker than we become conscious of any details, or even our own active attention. We gaze intentionally at visual objects and events, whereas atmospheres come to us omnidirectionally, similarly to acoustic and olfactory sensations.

We sense the overall mood, tuning, feeling, ambience and atmosphere of a setting before we have become conscious of it, or have identified any of its constituent features. In the process of design, atmospheric qualities also arise unconsciously in an embodied and haptic manner rather than through conscious retinal strategies and intentions. The sense of a coherent experiential entity is evoked by the designer’s

sense of existence and body more than conscious and deliberate visual intentionality.

Atmosphere is certainly closely related with the spirit of place, its genius loci, as well as our empathic and affective capacities. In the same way that music can charge a spatial or social situation with a particular mood, the ambience of a landscape, townscape or interior space can project similar integrating and encompassing feelings. Emotional reactions usually arise vaguely, without any distinct focused object or nameable cause. Love, happiness and hate, for instance, are not objects; they are relationships, moods and states of mind. Similarly, we may never intellectually ‘understand’ a work of art, but it can convey an ineffable influence throughout our entire lives.

‘Understanding is not a quality coming to human reality from the outside; it is its characteristic way of existing,’ argued Jean-Paul Sartre.7 This implies that, contrary to our accepted beliefs, we grasp entities before details, singularities before their components, multisensory syntheses before individual sensory features, and emotive or existential meanings before intellectual explanations. We sense embodied and existential meanings outside of the direct, conscious cognitive channels of our life situations. This exemplifies embodied and tacit knowledge. Yet these processes are

in evident conflict with established perceptual assumptions as well as the

‘Understanding

is not a quality coming to human reality from the outside; it is its characteristic way of existing’ — Jean-Paul Sartre

130

Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona,

1938

Perfect harmony and atmospheric attunement of landscape and architecture.

unquestioned priority given to formal and focused vision and cognitive understanding. Since the Greek philosophers, focused vision has been regarded as synonymous with knowledge and truth. However, neuroscience lends support to the view that we experience entities before elements, and we intuit lived meanings without conceptual or verbal signification. Our atmospheric

sense is clearly an evolutionary priority and a consequence of the activities of our right-brain hemisphere.8

Atmospheric Perception in Evolutionary Perspective

I suggest that we have developed our capacities of judging entities at the edge of our awareness through evolutionary processes. This point is also made by therapist-philosopher Iain McGilchrist.9 It has obviously been advantageous for humans to get the meaning of settings

in an instant in terms of their existential and survival qualities. We have developed, as other animals to various degrees, two independent yet complementary systems of perceiving; one mode of precise focused perception and the second of diffuse and unfocused peripheral scanning.10 Today’s science confirms the assumption that we have these two systems of perception – the conscious and unconscious – and that the first is activated 20 to 30 milliseconds before the latter. According to scholars such as Anton Ehrenzweig, unconscious scanning is also our creative mode of perception.11

131

Alvar Aalto, Säynätsalo Town Hall, Säynätsalo,

Finland,

1952

An emotive, atmospheric image of an Italian hill town concealed in contemporary architecture.

Peter Zumthor, Therme Vals, Graubünden, Switzerland, 1996

Zumthor is one of the internationally known architects today writing about the significance of atmospheres in architecture. His own architectural works project a strong atmospheric quality and cohesion.

132

Notes

1. Frank Lloyd Wright, ‘The Natural House’ [1954], in Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer (ed), The Essential Frank Lloyd Wright: Critical Writings

on Architecture, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2010, p 350.

2. Edward Relph, Place and Placelessness, Pion (London), 1986, p 51.

3. For information on proportionality, see: Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, Academy Editions and St Martin’s Press (London and NewYork), 1988; Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Attunement,

MIT Press (Cambridge, MA

and London), 2016; and Juhani Pallasmaa, ‘Man, Measure,

and Proportion’, Encounters 1 – Juhani Pallasmaa: Architectural Essays, Rakennustieto Publishing (Helsinki), 2012, pp 231–48.

4. Le Corbusier, Towards

a New Architecture, The Architectural Press (London), 1959, p 31.

5.The most recent studies of this subject are the books and writings of Peter Zumthor, Tonino Griffero, Jean-Paul Thibault and Alberto Pérez- Gómez.

6. Composer Kalevi Aho and pianist Minna Pöllänen.

7. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Emotions: An Outline of a Theory, Carol Publishing Co (NewYork), 1993, p 9.

8. See Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary:The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT and London), 2009, p 40.

9. Ibid, p 12.

10. Ibid, p 102.

11. Anton Ehrenzweig, The Hidden Order of Art [1970], Paladin (St Albans), 1973.

12. Ibid, p 59.

13. Ibid.

14. Iain McGilchrist, ‘Tending to the World’, in Sarah Robinson and Juhani Pallasmaa

(eds), Mind in Architecture: Neuroscience, Embodiment, and the Future of Design, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA and London), 2015, pp 99–122.

15. Gabriele d’Annunzio, Contemplazioni della morte, Milan, 1912, pp 17–18. As quoted in Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, Pegasus Foundation (Dallas, TX), 1983, p 16.

16. Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL and London), 2007, p 9.

17. See Ehrenzweig, op cit,

p 284.

18. Matti Bergström, Aivojen fysiologiasta ja psyykestä (On the Physiology of the Brain and Psyche), WSOY (Helsinki), 1979, pp 77–8.

19. David Howes (ed),The Sixth Sense Reader, Berg Publishers (Oxford and NewYork), 2011, pp 23–4.

However, precision needs to be suppressed for the purpose of observing

large entities. The mathematician Jacques Hadamard suggested that even in mathematics, the ultimate decision must be left to the unconscious, as a clear visualisation of problems is usually impossible.12 He stated categorically that it is mandatory ‘to cloud one’s consciousness in order to make the right judgement’.13 McGilchrist relates this divided attention with the differentiation of our two brain hemispheres. It is biologically advantageous to be able to make precise and focused observations and general, vague peripheral ones simultaneously, but would this

be impossible within a single system of perception?14 Focused vision detaches

itself from contextual interactions, whereas atmospheric observations fuse and unite all the sensations through the sense of being and self. The omnidirectional senses of hearing, hapticity and smell complement the visual sensations to produce a multisensory existential experience relating us fully with our setting. The experience of atmosphere or mood is thus predominantly an emotive, pre-reflective mode of experience.

Mood and Emotion

The richest experiences happen long before the soul takes notice. And when we begin to open our eyes to the visible, we have already been supporters of the invisible for a long time.15

— Gabriele d’Annunzio, 1912

One reason why peripheric perceptions have been undervalued, or totally neglected, in architecture is that we have not acknowledged that emotions evaluate, articulate and structure our relations with the world.

Emotions are regarded as unconscious, secondary reactions, instead of possessing intentionality and factual value. Yet emotions arise from primal levels of consciousness and, significantly, the first wave of neural signals is always directed to these unconscious systems. As the philosopher Mark Johnson has argued: ‘There is no cognition without emotion ... emotions are not second-rate cognitions; rather they are affective patterns of our encounter with our world, by which we take the meaning of things at a primordial level.’16 There is strong evidence that the unconscious system of perception has a higher existential priority.17 The potential superiority of the unconscious processes in comparison with consciousness is revealed dramatically by the neurological fact that the information-handling capacity of our entire nervous system is estimated to be 1015 times the capacity of our conscious system.18

The nature of vision itself has been grossly misunderstood as something automatic, objective and precise. Research has revealed that the process of

vision is a fragmented and discontinuous mosaic that constantly fuses perceptions with memory and imagination. A visual image itself is composed of separate percepts

of colour, form and movement, received at the temporal distance of 40 to 60 milliseconds. In addition, our focused vision sees what we have learned and

what we want to see, whereas the peripheral system of perception is capable of identifying what is genuinely new. Mood tunes us emotively with our environment, and as a consequence we do not need to continuously and consciously monitor its overwhelming medley of details.

We are not related to our environments only through the five Aristotelian senses;

in fact, The Sixth Sense Reader (2011)19 lists over 30 systems through which we

are connected with the world. I suggest that the atmospheric sense could be named our sixth sense, and it is likely to be existentially our most important. Simply, we do not stop at our skin; we extend our bodily self by means of our senses and our technological and constructed extensions. The elecromagnetic waves of the human heart can now be measured from a distance of 5 metres (16 feet) away, but in principle they extend to infinity. Thus, we unknowingly inhabit the entire universe. 1

Text © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: p 126 © Photo Adolfo Vera; p 127 Digital image © Tate, London, 2014; p 128(b) © Aulis Blomstedt Estate; p 129 © Photo Kari Hakli; pp 130-31 © Michael DeFreitas North America/Alamy Stock Photo; p 132(t) Courtesy Alvar Aalto Museum, photo Eino Mäkinen; p 132(b) © Hélène Binet

133

0 notes

liberalcom-blog · 5 years

Text

CORNELIA NO.1 :THE MAGAZINE OF THE MAGICKAL, MYSTICAL AND OFTEN PERSONAL WRITINGS OF J. EDWARD CORNELIUS AND ASSOCIATES (SIGNED)

https://liber-al.com/?p=18407&wpwautoposter=1563823393 J. Edward Cornelius, Berkley, California, USA, 2007. A4 staple-bound magazine, 8 ½ x 11 with card stock cover (signed). Cornelia Issue No. 1 signed by J. Edward Cornelius. A remarkable Near Fine copy. IN THIS ISSUE: AN OPEN EPISTLE ON GRADY McMURTRY’s A.’.A.’. UNDERSTANDING OR BRANCH OF THE TREE: An Open Epistle on the Birth of the A.’.A.’.. IN QUEST OF THE HOLY GUARDIAN ANGEL – Part One; THE DAIMON, BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL THE MAGICKAL ESSENCE OF ALEISTER CROWLEY: No.1 – An Open Letter regarding the Holy Guardian Angel AN OPEN EPISTLE TO THE FALLEN GRETA VALENTINE (biography) “CORNELIA From the man who brought you ~ RED FLAME ~ A Thelemic Research Journal This is a magazine about possibilities. Although the cover may dredge up images of something evil or sinister, in point of fact, it is an actual true reflection of the method used in attaining godhood. The illustration is that of a deity known as Baphomet; half myth and bathed in a hundred possibilities regarding his origin and the meaning behind his name. Still, regardless of what historians write, magicians have their own beliefs. Baphomet is an entity who teaches the measure between Heaven and Earth, the Macrocosm and Microcosm, between us and the Gods. He is properly called The Father of the Temple of Universal Peace Among Men, which in Latin is Templi Omnium Hominum Pacis Abbas. The mystery of his name is seen by taking the following eight letters of each Latin word, or TEM O H P AB, and then reversing them to get BAPHOMET. The Temple mentioned is our human body. In many ways Baphomet represents everyone’s daimon or Holy Guardian Angel. He is our internal voice, regardless whether it offers good or bad advice; which simply chatters inside our head; a voice which does not appear to anyone else, but only to the thinker himself. Although he could be, Baphomet is not necessarily malefic, wicked or even an evil inhuman entity. In truth, he is neutral; androgynous, neither male, nor female, but both at the same time; the seed of All possibilities. In the Introduction to The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage (1898) Samuel L. MacMregor-Mathers informs us that the system of communicating with our Angel enlightens us to the fact that man is merely the “bridge” or “natural controller of the middle nature between the Angels and the Demons, and that therefore to each man is attached naturally both a Guardian Angel and a Malevolent Demon.” He goes on to point out that the Demon “is derived from the Greek Daimon.” Sadly, most individuals who quest for their Angel total ignore the premise that they might have been given a Demon at birth, as well as an Angel. Yet this is one of the most important foundation stones to the sacred art known as the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. In fact, this magickal system is one of the few which acknowledges that man was given a ‘daimon’ but true to form; by the time the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage was written, Christianity had already vilified the daimon into a fallen Angel or Demon. The questions that we will be asking are whether or not this Angel actually fell and if not, does that mean we all have two Angels and, if so, “How do they interrelate?” Ah, so many questions and we shall attempt to answer the majority throughout the first issue of this magazine and in future issues. The bottom line is that Baphomet is neutral and, like our daimon, he can take us to heights of heaven or keep us bound on Earth. Being both the editor to this magazine and the present head of Grady Louis McMurtry’s AA lineage makes this publication far more ‘personal’ for me than for others, which is why I have chosen the titled CORNELIA. This is a Latin word referring to the feminine gender or opposite of the male equivalent known as Cornelius, which is my last name. The latter represents my mortal shell or the incarnation of J. Edward Cornelius while Cornelia implies, in this case, my eternal female which lies within. Between these two poles lies my ‘genii.’ To the Romans this internal spirit was something fleeting but found in all things. Its whisperings were believed to be the source that guides us in our higher actions. According to Roman Mythology the genii could be a guardian spirit of a person, an object, a place, or even a family. It was said that individuals who accepted the guidance of a particular genii become possessed by extraordinary intellectual and creative powers, the source of which was called the ‘genius.’ The Corneliuses, like every family, are guided by a special ‘genius’ or guardian spirit. In ancient Rome this particular family genius is referred to by the initials GPC or Genius Populi Cornelia, or Genius of the Cornelius People. I have adhered to its whisperings most of my life and this magazine is the teaching tool of my discoveries which I teach within Grady Louis McMurtry’s AA lineage.”

0 notes

bharatiyamedia-blog · 5 years

Text

The Notre Dame and its ‘talking stones’

http://tinyurl.com/yy82a398 “At one time, Notre Dame de Paris raised its majesty on prime of flight of 11 steps. Standing remoted simply from a slender churchyard, from the wood homes, from the sharp pinions organized in overhanging planes, it gained in boldness and class what it misplaced in mass. At this time as an alternative, it appears extra large as a result of is extra indifferent from the opposite buildings, with the porticos, the pillars and the buttresses resting straight on the bottom; the next embankments, step by step have stuffed the hole and ended up absorbing it till the final step.” That is how Fulcanelli, an alchemist whose identification stays a matter of debate, described Paris’s Notre Dame in 1926, stressing that 11 steps and solely a small sq. separated the medieval cathedral from the encircling buildings. The cathedral was hemmed in by neighbouring constructions and wanted its towers to rise above the village. Thought-about the final of the alchemists, Fulcanelli emphasis on quantity 11 stems from alchemical symbology during which 11 is the fifth prime quantity, derived from including 6 and 5. The quantity 5 is the ‘Man’s quantity’ — 5 fingers of a hand, the 5 senses and, in Bible, 5 wounds of the Christ on the cross. The quantity 5 symbolises a microcosm, people as miniature embodiments of the universe. The quantity 6 is the determine of the Biblical Hexameron, the variety of creation — the world was created in six days. The 2 numbers collectively characterize the union of microcosm and the macrocosm. In Christianity, 11 can also be the variety of apostles left after the resurrection of Jesus. The quantity symbolises the start of a brand new order, change, a renewal or perhaps a reversal. So what does a gothic cathedral must do with alchemy, which the Church banned after labelling it as heresy and witchcraft? All the things. Gothic artwork and alchemy Work on Notre Dame started in 1163, which coincided with the rise of the Knights Templar, who constructed and financed dozens of cathedrals. Gothic artwork and structure flourished throughout Europe throughout the mid-12th century and early 13th century on the again of the success of crusades led by the Templars, an order impressed by Saint Bernard and the Cistercian monastic rule. Alchemy, too, gained floor. Some say the Templars introduced the thought of turning lead into gold from the Sufis they met throughout crusades. However, it had a deeper which means too—turning the tough into the proper, shunning impurities, communion with divinity. It gave an astrological dimension to alchemy, one which explores a person’s relationship with the cosmos. So, gothic cathedrals should not meant to be merely a church, a spot of worship. They’re alchemical books, written in stone and exhibiting the best way to the proper, the tip purpose. These cathedrals are power centres, constructed on historical Celtic locations of worship, the place the telluric power is the best. Telluric currents are pure electrical currents that movement on and beneath the earth’s floor, and are affected by the solar and different planets of the photo voltaic system. Excessive telluric power is believed to have an effect on a human’s electromagnetic subject, heightening the sense of consciousness. Gothic cathedrals are supposed to elevate the power stage of those that entered the house, with out their data, or to function initiatory paths for individuals who knew. Within the esoteric non secular context, the initiatory path is an inevitable technique of change.The particular person, the group or the textual content that determines the initiation is the repository of a secret data that’s transferred on the finish of an alchemical journey. The initiatory path is nearly all the time associated to the thought of simultaneous loss of life and rebirth, to a course of the place the start of the trail additionally determines the tip of an earlier existence. This inevitable “loss of life” is the one means that enables the ascend or entry to a brand new, unknown stage of actuality. The Templars, like Saint Bernard, had been below the safety of the Virgin Mary, dedicated to the mom of God. However, not like Saint Bernard, they had been additionally alchemists. If one had been to attach on a map of France the cathedrals of Amiens, Bayeux, Chartres, Coutances, Evreux, Laon, Noyon, Reims, Rouen, Senlis and Paris, they type what is named the Constellation of the Virgin. All these cathedrals are devoted to the Notre Dame, to the Virgin, and particularly the Black Virgin or the Black Madonna. Over time, the Catholic Church has whitewashed the Black Virgins, merely making them disappear. The Virgin commemorated by the Templars will not be the Mom of Jesus. The Black Virgin is an alchemical image, representing the uncooked materials, the “virgin” matter. The last word purpose of alchemy is magnum opus, or the Nice Work, and has 4 phases: black (nigredo), white (albedo), yellow (citrinitas) and the crimson (rubedo). Roughly, the 4 levels characterize the cycle of loss of life to rebirth, perfection of human soul and its illustration may be present in a gothic cathedral: supplies, metals, gargoyles and labyrinths, all of them allude to this course of. Laying it out A illustration of the cosmic order, a gothic cathedral is all the time deliberate within the form of a cross. The horizontal arm corresponds to the equinoxes and the solstices, whereas the vertical arm represents the poles. On the centre of the cross, the place the horizontal and vertical arms intersect, is the altar that connects man to his being. The axis of the nave, the central half meant for the congregation, will not be in step with the choir, the house reserved for clergy. This deviation will not be a design error, however is meant, symbolising the invisible border between rational data, one that may be questioned, as represented by the nave, and the choir, the place of absolute data. Symmetry is loss of life, dissymmetry is life, affirming the Pythagorean teachings. The deviation of the axis is without doubt one of the clearest manifestations of a artistic dissymmetry that deviates from the straight line of motive. The cathedrals, like different sacred buildings, are rigidly oriented with the apse going through east, the place the solar rises. Within the north, the place apparently there’s nothing however darkness, there’s all the time a portal stuffed with symbols resulting in the initiatory path. To the west, there are bas-reliefs of the final judgment and to the south, a big rose window that makes the daylight shine by in all its pressure. From the highest of the towers, we see the entire world. The north-west tower represents the solar, the masculine precept and the south-west the moon, the female precept. The nave is architecturally an upturned ship, an emblem of Noah’s Ark, a journey in direction of mild. Near the nave is the labyrinth, also referred to as the Jerusalem Path, a way of meditation and a stroll that brings one nearer to the divine. Nearly all of them have been destroyed, however in Amiens and Chartres they continue to be witness that the initiatory path can join us to our being. The rosettes, unparalleled masterpieces of glass artwork, represents the motion of the alchemical hearth. The choir is corresponding to the Holy of Holies. The bishop’s chair is positioned within the choir, to the east the place the solar rises and the sunshine is born. Nothing is finished for aesthetics—all the pieces has a sensible and exact objective. The cathedral that has its base on earth and rises to the sky is the dwelling image of the unity of creation. For Templars, the cathedral makes the universe perceptible, it’s not an administrative constructing, however a dwelling physique of “talking stones”. Stones that proceed and can proceed to talk by the centuries, regardless of hearth and destruction. (Francesca Marino is a journalist and a South Asia knowledgeable who has written Apocalypse Pakistan with B Natale) Your information to the most recent cricket World Cup tales, evaluation, studies, opinions, stay updates and scores on https://www.firstpost.com/firstcricket/series/icc-cricket-world-cup-2019.html. Comply with us on Twitter and Instagram or like our Facebook web page for updates all through the continued occasion in England and Wales. !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function() {n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)} ; if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '259288058299626'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); window.fbAsyncInit = function () { FB.init({appId: '1117108234997285', version: 2.4, xfbml: true}); // *** here is my code *** if (typeof facebookInit == 'function') { facebookInit(); } }; (function () { var e = document.createElement('script'); e.src = document.location.protocol + '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js'; e.async = true; document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e); }()); function facebookInit() { console.log('Found FB: Loading comments.'); FB.XFBML.parse(); } Source link

0 notes