Torch-bearer

Jacques Louis David would be leaping with joy, if he could see my past teacher, Rob Armetta keeping the French Academic way alive and well in our days. God bless him, more power to him!

http://www.artistsnetwork.com/article/paint-classical-portrait/

Random though: Isn't it interesting the parallels between the sub-culture of metal and classical music, contemporary fine art and modern hermeticism?

All are esoteric, rich with meaning, contradictions and rituals. All are different arts that make up the Greater Art.

The Purpose of Art - The Opposite is Also True

This past weekend I went camping with Lisa, Irv and Alden. My first time camping in my adult life. My only memories of sleeping in a tent are from too early in my life to remember them vividly. I took a backpack full of books just in case, but spent most of the time observing my surroundings. I should have more than enough material to finish The Apostle in Triumph through the winter, its a painting that is painting itself.

On that note, my most important triumph this weekend was an epiphany that occurred to me while reading Nichol's Jung and Tarot, an Archetypal Journey. I was reading about the Angel of Temperance and the mixture of opposite elements into perfect harmony by the hands of the Angel. everything clicked. I thought of the Alchemical process of the Great Work, the gentle heat of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes which brings us in union with the Holy Guardian Angel, taking us by the hand and elevating us up the Tree of Life. I thought of Crowley's change of the name of the card to ART. ART was the answer. I looked at its path in the Tree of Life, path 25 joining 6 Tiphareth - Beauty and 9 Yesod - Foundation.

This is not one artistic discipline, or magical art, it is all ART. Its Hebrew letter is Samekh (serpent) it is infinity, the serpent tattooed on Irv's right forearm, with the Beauty of the Rose on his left forearm, thus his Avatar in Dusk of the Dead is aligned with this force. The path is intersected by path 27, The Tower, with a God-inflicted lightning overthrowing this tower of human thought and reason. One cannot ascent to the Sephirah of Beauty without overthrowing this tower of rationality. Beauty can be studied, perhaps even approximated in the Golden Means of 1.618, but at a certain point logic is breaks down as we ascend in the Tree. We try to analyse it, explain it, but that certain mystical power of a great work of art always transcends words. Art history is filled with seemingly opposing forces which overtake one another from age to age, forces that can be best exemplified by Classical vs Romanticist, thought vs emotion, reason vs passion, Man as the measure of all things, and our own insignificance in the face of the great Universe. Art joins the Sun and the Moon together ala Michelangelo's Creation of the Sun and the Moon in the Sistine Chappel ceiling. The mixing of fire and water, polar opposites at the hands of the angel prepares us for what is to come in the abyss above the 4th and 5th sephiroth where our logic fails and opposites are harmonious (Sheehan's words ring in my head "everything I tell you, the opposite is also true") This first level break down of coherence is experienced in our world through Art-painting, music, sculpture, poetry. Music, being the most abstract and accessible these days, often propels me past the path of the Tower, putting me in a trance from where I get most of my inspiration and channel it down to earth through color pigments, where in a fixed painting, it exists beyond the constraints of the 4th dimension, time. Many people will never ascend passed the Tower, but if you can get passed it, everything connects, everything is a mirror of something else, and everything reveals divinity. One of many songs that occurred to me, some of which i jotted down in my sketchbook, is Epic. One of my favorite songs by Faith no More, that up until a few months ago I had no idea what it was about, as I'm sure most people still don't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AMS3XNK9CU&feature=player_embedded

Can you feel it, see it, hear it today?
If you cant, then it doesnt matter anyway
You will never understand it cuz it happens too fast
And it feels so good, its like walking on glass
Its so cool, its so hip, its alright
Its so groovy, its outta sight
You can touch it, smell it, taste it so sweet
But it makes no difference cuz it knocks you off your feet
You want it all but you cant have it
Its cryin, bleedin, lying on the floor
So you lay down on it and you do it some more
Youve got to share it, so you dare it
Then you bare it and you tear it
You want it all but you cant have it
Its in your face but you cant grab it
Its alive, afraid, a lie, a sin
Its magic, its tragic, its a loss, its a win
Its dark, its moist, its a bitter pain
Its sad it happened and its a shame
You want it all but you cant have it
Its in your face but you cant grab it
What is it?
Its it
What is it? ...

As determined by my birth date, my soul card is the Hierophant, path 16, joining 2 Chokmah - Wisdom and 4 Chesed - Mercy, with Art as my personality aspect as the Hierophant. The path which joins the both, Art and the Hierophant is the Hermit, path 20, joining 4 Chesed - Mercy and 6 Tiphareth - Beauty. So now I understand why the Apostle in Triumph is a painting that is painting itself, the Hermit being the Hierophant as seen in an earthly nature connecting Art, Beauty with higher, transcendental levels of consciousness. This is my purpose as the Hierophant, this is the purpose of Art in the Universe, to reveal "mystical truths." I understand that the path of Art does not lead all the way down 10 -Malkuth - The Kingdom, Earth. As much as I try to be accessible to everyone, there needs to be a level of afford for the common man to meet me half way in The Foundation, so that Art can lead them higher. Its the nature of fine art and esoteric mysticism.

I also took the time to practice meditation by myself, sat too close to the fire and breathed some smoke, otherwise it was very good progress. My mind still fights to project pictures, I shush it when I can, but at deeper levels its much easier to ignore it, much like a distant barking dog. It was the closest to a voluntary outer body experience that I've ever had.

High

Today was the highest I've ever been in the Tree without the aid of any substance. If there are other times, perhaps dreaming, where I have ascended higher, I can't remember it. Having initiated practiced my first actual meditation session with Lisa's help using her rainbow technique, I'm becoming more familiar with my own mind, and ways to quiet it down so that it ceases to project the endless random sound, visuals and chatter that monopolizes my awareness. Doing this opens me up to Neshamah (Soul Intuition) the next world above the Ruach (Intellect) in the four quabalistic worlds of my being. I experienced this today while working on the Apostle in Triumph while listening to my I-pod (Mahler's 3rd Symphony cd 1 then the latter half of the Orchid album then Aerials) If transcendental love is the way to “knowledge and conversation with my Holy Guardian Angel” then in that 30 minutes or so while finishing up because it was getting too dark, I had attained it. I put everything away and was still gripped by that state of mind (as though I did not want to come back down) Trying to put that to words at this time, it all turns muddy, much like my paintings compared to the original vision. But its all for nothing I can't bring any of that down to share with others, or rather, it would be selfish of me, so I have to try. One way to do this, is taking Lisa's advice to ground myself, so when I couldn't function doing the mundane task of putting my tools away, I had to will myself down, clap my hands loudly (to break the "spell") then eat something like a cracker, which I did. Even then I was different, and am still, not the same. Inside the house, in complete silence with eyes closed standing in the living room, I briefly saw the whole world as it looked in my dream from 07. I was very high and losing myself, only aware of my tears and the patch of floor I stood on as it floated on high. I felt my chakras aligned, even though I haven't studied enough about them to know all by heart, but my heart chackra burned with love while my crown chackra pulled me up higher. other things were happening which I'm not entirely familiar with. Words fail me.

The Beginning of Truth

I used to spend so much time writing a blog entry, always telling myself it wouldn't take long, but it would always end up being a novel by the time I was done with a single entry. Well surely this will be no different. Though I really should try to shorten it with a rundown of events since the last entry, it may help me practice saying more with less words.

Sometime a week or two after the last entry Lisa went for a checkup with her doctor and the blood test came back with diabetic blood sugar level. She was diabetic, I was very sad and worried about her at first, as she was shaken up, yet not surprised. The end result ended up being positive as Lisa and Irv (and myself by extension) evaluated our calorie intake vs calories burnt daily using the help of a stayfit and sparkpeople.com. They started working out and cutting off empty calories, thanks to Lisa's amazing cooking her meals were still as good as ever, with less calories. I started losing weight just without even dieting at all, simply moderating my calorie intake based on my level of activity. (and not eating half a stick of butter with toast)

My brother called me one day and during the conversation he managed to pry into how I was doing “spiritually” asking if I would ever go back to the meetings. I was already developing some interest in my spiritual research through some Hermetic literature in Lisa's bookshelf, but had not yet dealt with the old questions about the validity of my previous religion. Claudio's spiritual push over the phone had me answering me simply over how I felt, though sometime delivering answers that shocked him, such as my disbelief in the entire Bible as God's final word, and his “truth” as not “the truth” but a way to “a truth.” This sent his head spinning, “but if we can't believe in the Bible what else is there to believe in?” was his only reply. He asked how I arrived at my conclusions, I told him I felt them in my heart. He then flung an old scripture often manipulated by the Watchtower to keep their “sheep” in line. “But the 'heart of men is deceptive' the Bible tells us. This sent me into such a inner rage, yet I could not let it show, nor did I say what later came to mind. “Then why does Jesus say “love God with your whole heart...'?” would be my logical question had I not been so stunned by his attempt at spiritual bullying. I told him that I would study more on the matter and return to him, since I couldn't exactly give facts to disprove the Witness dogmas, which I knew in my heart to be wrong.
I went online and started searching for more information about the Witness, exactly what we were always told not to do. I started with wikipedia, and found a pretty broad outside view on the insular religious movement, looks up the sources and looked further. I bought The Gentile Times Reconsidered by Carl Olof Jonsson and In Search for Christian Freedom by Raymond Franz, former member of the Governing Body of JW's, I also intend on getting his Crisis of Conscience. The first gave me the archaeological evidence I needed that debunks the self proclaimed divine authority of the Watchtower, by giving ample evidence that Jerusalem did not fall to the Jews in 607 BC but in 587 BC as is the accepted date. Once I compiled enough evidence from searched Jonsson's sources in official archaeological websites, I presented it to Claudio over the phone.

A few days later he called me back thanking me for reinforcing his faith by leading him to an in depth research. He told me he found a website written by some anonymous source who doesn't identify himself as a witness. This source was supposedly making Claudio's argument using only interpretations of Bible texts to do so, without the backing of the archaeological evidence as a measure for Biblical chronology, yet relying on that same archeology to point out their desired date as an anchor point and counting 70 years backwards from then. It was clear that I wasn't going to get through to him, so I said I'd check his work on my own and get back to him later. Honestly I had been studying the subject for over a week, and felt like putting an end to it and looking forward, not backwards. I haven't called him back yet.

I invested myself wholeheartedly on establishing my spiritual path, find the truth. And it led me to a witty writer and OTO member who made the works of Crowley more accessible to me, Lon Milo DuQuette. His Chicken Qabalah was best described in one of my conversations with Lisa. I told her that it was like finding a door, opening it to the Supreme Being, the Holy of Holies in all of his and her Glory, my True Self in union with Divinity and all the intricacies of the vast Universe in the Tree of Life, nearly blinded by the light saying “oh shit!” and slamming the door shut while gasping for air. I knew, from various dreams that I was meant to find truth by connecting the pieces together, a brief look at the Qabalah gave me a preview of a flexible systematic grid that can do just that. I have since read Aleister Crowley's Illustrated Goetia, My Life with the Spirits, half way through The Magick of Aleister Crowley, half way through Jung and Tarot an Archetypal Journey by Sallie Nichols (where reading about the Magician I came to the realization of ONE prior to reading the Chicken Qabalah) and just started Modern Magick by Donald Michael Kraig at Lisa's recommendation. I've skimmed many others and have many others on my reading list.


I'm beginning to memorize parts of initiatory banishing spells, and am internalizing their meaning as well. If it does not resonates with my very soul, then it will have no effect. But first in my practice I have to be able to meditate properly, something I sorely need and Lisa will help me with. I told Lisa “My mind is like a very demanding juggling clown who is doing all kinds of circus acts going “Lookatme! Lookatme!” Thanks to my understanding of my inner Tree of Life I realize that this is the realm of Ruach (I think therefore I am) exercising its monopoly over my consciousness, keeping me from ascending to intuitive truths from my Real Self which it simply can't grasp. I've just started reading Crowley's Book 4 (a culmination of a lot of 4s coming up daily as of lately). In it, so far, he is giving me the “how to” and the historical background of Holy men who transcended thought through meditation and were transformed by Divine truths they saw.

The personal power and control over my destiny that these esoteric universal truths give me, along with practical application of my will through its alignment with divine will accomplished through rituals make the plight of Art in Post-modernity seem like child's play. I have the Universe at my finger tips, I've always had it, and simply did not know it. I'm only now learning to KNOW it.

All of this coincided with the start of my first real expression of faith through painting, something I pulled from the great void even before the library I'm now invested in. Inspired from the Opeth song of the same name, The Apostle in Triumph. More on that on a future entry.