31 Oct 2010
Therion
Apparently these Swedish guys are very popular here and that's why they are returning for another concert.
I don't listen to any heavy metal, but these graphics grabbed my eye today (because of the Theta-connection). A quick search reveals that they were inspired by Nordic mythology, and this has become entirely Christopher Johnsson's project, who is into a type of "dark and confused spiritual realm, which he completely owns up to, however". Good on him.
I don't see this going any further with me, but I'll just do a quick research as an exercise. I do know most of those references. And no, it may be dark but it isn't necessarily confused (one's own judgment of it can be), and the lyrics are not "difficult to penetrate" - they're straightforward listings of occultist concepts. When I say occultist concepts, I mean "the way the occultist inteprets that which is". (The suffix "ism" means that you commit yourself to a particular way of seeing and interpreting information. However, the same reality may be encountered by other groups, who will present it in a different light).
17 Oct 2010
Romanian Fairytales & Mircea Cãrtãrescu
I have discovered that Romanian culture has a distinct involvement with Stargates, expressed first and foremost in the belief that the land itself is a so-called "Mouth of Heaven", as in being found on the borderline between dimensions (sensing this opening into another realm). These are the most recent clues I've come across.
Fairytales of the Romanians, book series sale ad:
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And Mircea Cãrtãrescu says that "life as something between birth and death, surrounded by nothingness" is a mindframe we need to overcome: life is a larval or pupal stage, which enables us to then "take the gate to Universal life".
This is very interesting as it also recalls Mihai Eminescu's explanation of "genius" as someone who already has a Passport in life, to this Universal life. Note that this is not about 'rewards' or 'punishments', but about what the human individual does from within - affinities, attractions, and the way the soul is diligent in following his own path.
More recently, people have started noticing that through the work of Poets, what is called "scientific knowledge" is being transmitted - even before certain principles are discovered as part of 'Science'. This is certainly a field I'd like to explore more in the future: how can a poet know how the Universe was formed, for example, without any scientific training, and then have his ideas confirmed by later ages?
Michelangelo's Piazza del Campidoglio
In my previous post, I mentioned Vivaldi's Andromeda Liberata. Now I will go further back in time to the Renaissance, whencefrom we get most of our modern concepts from (such as individuality, etc). Someone showed me a picture of Michelangelo's design for the ideal town square - explaining that, in those days, architects began to dream of ideal cities in the shape of octagons, pentagons and so on. (It is a shame really that this is viewed as limited to the Western society, since the idea of mandala-shaped cities is very prominent in Asia, of course. In my personal view, however, I do not sense why these Platonic, geometrical city shapes would be internally important. Even walking in a geometrical garden, there is a contradiction, not an expression, of natural principles and flow. You know it should be a square, but you just can't see it. The only place it makes sense is from above - an aerial view. Perhaps they were made to be admired from Space? Feel free to disagree, and let me know if you can make out the connection to an internal effect on the geometrical city's inhabitants... other than "We all live inside a perfect octagon and you do NOT! HA!").
When I saw this image of Michelangelo's town square, I had a very distinct reaction, that of accessing Other Sight. The psyche gives way to something wider, and thus relates to something that escapes everyday, directed scrutiny. Spiders create their webs, beavers build their dams, bees their hexagonal tubes, snails their perfectly spiral-shaped shells, etc - humans are also capable of amazing architecture.
We are, however, "symbologically" conscious of that which we create - and this symbol-consciousness sometimes obscures the wider implication of the symbols we use. For example, it is generally explained that Michelangelo wanted to portray the 12 constellations and even the Omphalos Stone, in his design (in his attempt to connect Italian identity to Etruscan culture). But explaining it this way tones down and encages the profound impact that these realities (constellations, Omphalos Stone) might have on perception. It is much easier to see them as artifacts in history, and get only their "legacy" value, rather than interact with them anew. Once we have named something, we think we have understood it. But how did the Omphalos Stone actually work? What do we really know about the workings of the minds of historical (and prehistoric) men? (I think there are a number of books on this very interesting subject, how the mind layers time, the spirit within things, and our fascination/horror with stories about "reactivation" of lost artifacts).
Michelangelo's involvement with such a concept can therefore be relegated to the level of the Ego (outer meaning), where he is entirely conscious of what his design "means" (the purpose he has imagined for it, a purpose which is entirely bound to his historical and political context). This, however, doesn't explain why his design ends up resembling the Native American "dream-catchers" (inner meaning), or our modern understanding of Relativity and Astronomy. And it doesn't say why this looks precisely like a Vortex or Wormhole grid, as it is understood by modern scientists.
Viewed this way, the issue of placing a statue of a Roman emperor in the middle star (which apparently went against Michelangelo's wishes) is certainly interesting. We tend to think of Roman emperors as people who were obsessed with order and who tended to plagiarize every culture they conquered, but some of them did ask a lot of questions: about themselves, the world, about what we're supposed to be doing here, and why they were found in such a demanding role.