Places chapter heading, illustrating the rhyme Coming to Town (p81).

And Over the Hills, a Places rhyme (p88):

Tom he was a piper’s son.
He learnt to play when he was young.
But all the tune that he could play
Was ‘Over the hills and far away’.
Over the hills and a great way off,
The wind shall blow my top-knot off.

“The inner need is the basic alike of small and great problems in painting. We are seeking today for the road which is to lead us away from the outer to the inner basis. The spirit, like the body, can be strengthened and developed by frequent exercise. Just as the body, if neglected, grows weaker and finally impotent, so the spirit perishes if untended. And for this reason it is necessary for the artist to know the starting point for the exercise of his spirit.

“The starting point is the study of colour and its effect on men.

“There is no need to engage in the finer shades of complicated colour, but rather at first to consider only the direct use of simple colours.

“To begin with, let us test the working on ourselves of individual colours, and so make a simple chart [figures I and II, below], which will facilitate the consideration of the whole question.

Figure I, p36f. Click for larger version.

“Two great divisions of colour occur to the mind at the outset: into warm and cold, and into light and dark. To each colour there are therefore four shades of appeal—warm and light or warm and dark, or cold and light or cold and dark.

“Generally speaking, warmth or cold in a colour means an approach respectively to yellow or to blue. This distinction is, so to speak, on one basis, the colour having a constant fundamental appeal, but assuming either a more material or more non-material quality. The movement is a horizontal one, the warm colours approaching the spectator, the cold ones retreating from him.

“The colours, which cause in another colour this horizontal movement, while they are themselves affected by it, have another movement of their own, which acts with a violent separative force. That is, therefore, the first antithesis in the inner appeal, and the inclination of colour to yellow or to blue, is of tremendous importance.

“The second antithesis is between white and black; i.e., the inclination to light or dark caused by the pair of colours just mentioned. These colours have once more their peculiar movement to and from the spectator, but in a more rigid form.

“Yellow and blue have another movement which affects the first antithesis—an ex- and concentric movement. If two circles are drawn and painted respectively with yellow and blue, brief concentration will reveal in the yellow a spreading movement out from the centre, and a noticeable approach to the spectator. The blue, on the other hand, moves in upon itself, like a snail retreating into its shell, and draws away from the spectator.

“In the case of light and dark colours the movement is emphasized. That of the yellow increases with an admixture of white, i.e., as it becomes lighter. That of the blue increases with an admixture of black, i.e., as it becomes darker. This mean that there can never be a dark-coloured yellow. The relationship between white and yellow is as close as between black and blue, for blue can be so dark as to border on black. Besides this physical relationship, is also a spiritual one (between yellow and white on one side, between blue and black on the other) which marks a strong separation between the two pairs.

“An attempt to make yellow colder produces a green tint and checks both the horizontal and excentric movement. The colour becomes sickly and unreal. The blue by its contrary movement acts as a brake on the yellow, and is hindered in its own movement, till the two together become stationary, and the result is green. Similarly a mixture of black and white produces gray, which is motionless and spiritually very similar to green.

“But while green, yellow, and blue are potentially active, though temporarily paralysed, in gray there is no possibility of movement, because gray consists of two colours that have no active force, for they stand the one in motionless discord, the other in a motionless negation, even of discord, like an endless wall or a bottomless pit.

“Because the component colours of green are active and have a movement of their own, it is possible, on the basis of this movement, to reckon their spiritual appeal.

“The first movement of yellow, that of approach to the spectator (which can be increased by an intensification of the yellow), and also the second movement, that of over-spreading the boundaries, have a material parallel in the human energy which assails every obstacle blindly, and bursts forth aimlessly in every direction.

“Yellow, if steadily gazed at in any geometrical form, has a disturbing influence, and reveals in the colour an insistent, aggressive character. The intensification of the yellow increases the painful shrillness of its note.

“Yellow is the typically earthly colour. It can never have profound meaning. An intermixture of blue makes it a sickly colour. It may be paralleled in human nature, with madness, not with melancholy or hypochondriacal mania, but rather with violent raving lunacy.

“The power of profound meaning is found in blue, and first in its physical movements (1) of retreat from the spectator, (2) of turning in upon its own centre. The inclination of blue to depth is so strong that its inner appeal is stronger when its shade is deeper.

“Blue is the typical heavenly colour. The ultimate feeling it creates is one of rest. When it sinks almost to black, it echoes a grief that is hardly human. When it rises towards white, a movement little suited to it, its appeal to men grows weaker and more distant…

“A well-balanced mixture of blue and yellow produces green. The horizontal movement ceases; likewise that from and towards the centre. The effect on the soul through the eye is therefore motionless. This is a fact recognized not only by opticians but by the world. Green is the most restful colour that exists. On exhausted men this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after a time it becomes wearisome. Pictures painted in shades of green are passive and tend to be wearisome; this contrasts with the active warmth of yellow or the active coolness of blue. In the hierarchy of colours green is the ‘bourgeoisie’-self-satisfied, immovable, narrow. It is the colour of summer, the period when nature is resting from the storms of winter and the productive energy of spring.

“Any preponderance in green of yellow or blue introduces a corresponding activity and changes the inner appeal. The green keeps its characteristic equanimity and restfulness, the former increasing with the inclination to lightness, the latter with the inclination to depth…

“Black and white have already been discussed in general terms. More particularly speaking, white, although often considered as no colour (a theory largely due to the Impressionists, who saw no white in nature), is a symbol of a world from which all colour as a definite attribute has disappeared. This world is too far above us for its harmony to touch our souls. A great silence, like an impenetrable wall, shrouds its life from our understanding. White, therefore, has this harmony of silence, which works upon us negatively… It is not a dead silence, but one pregnant with possibilities. White has the appeal of the nothingness that is before birth, of the world in the ice age.

“A totally dead silence, on the other hand, a silence with no possibilities, has the inner harmony of black… Black is something burnt out, like the ashes of a funeral pyre, something motionless like a corpse. The silence of black is the silence of death. Outwardly black is the colour with least harmony of all, a kind of neutral background against which the minutest shades of other colours stand clearly forward. It differs from white in this also, for with white nearly every colour is in discord, or even mute altogether.

“Not without reason is white taken as symbolizing joy and spotless purity, and black grief and death. A blend of black and white produces gray which, as has been said, is silent and motionless, being composed of two inactive colours, its restfulness having none of the potential activity of green. A similar gray is produced by a mixture of green and red, a spiritual blend of passivity and glowing warmth.

Figure II, p36f. Click for larger version.

“The unbounded warmth of red has not the irresponsible appeal of yellow, but rings inwardly with a determined and powerful intensity It glows in itself, maturely, and does not distribute its vigour aimlessly.

“The varied powers of red are very striking. By a skillful use of it in its different shades, its fundamental tone may be made warm or cold.

“Light warm red has a certain similarity to medium yellow, alike in texture and appeal, and gives a feeling of strength, vigour, determination, triumph…

“Vermilion is a red with a feeling of sharpness, like glowing steel which can be cooled by water. Vermilion is quenched by blue, for it can support no mixture with a cold colour. More accurately speaking, such a mixture produces what is called a dirty colour, scorned by painters of today. But “dirt” as a material object has its own inner appeal, and therefore to avoid it in painting, is as unjust and narrow as was the cry of yesterday for pure colour. At the call of the inner need that which is outwardly foul may be inwardly pure, and vice versa.

“The two shades of red just discussed are similar to yellow, except that they reach out less to the spectator. The glow of red is within itself. For this reason it is a colour more beloved than yellow, being frequently used in primitive and traditional decoration, and also in peasant costumes, because in the open air the harmony of red and green is very beautiful. Taken by itself this red is material, and, like yellow, has no very deep appeal. Only when combined with something nobler does it acquire this deep appeal. It is dangerous to seek to deepen red by an admixture of black, for black quenches the glow, or at least reduces it considerably.

“But there remains brown, unemotional, disinclined for movement. An intermixture of red is outwardly barely audible, but there rings out a powerful inner harmony. Skillful blending can produce an inner appeal of extraordinary, indescribable beauty. The vermilion now rings like a great trumpet, or thunders like a drum.

“Cool red (madder) like any other fundamentally cold colour, can be deepened—especially by an intermixture of azure. The character of the colour changes; the inward glow increases, the active element gradually disappears. But this active element is never so wholly absent as in deep green. There always remains a hint of renewed vigour, somewhere out of sight, waiting for a certain moment to burst forth afresh. In this lies the great difference between a deepened red and a deepened blue, because in red there is always a trace of the material… A cold, light red contains a very distinct bodily or material element, but it is always pure, like the fresh beauty of the face of a young girl…

“Warm red, intensified by a suitable yellow, is orange. This blend brings red almost to the point of spreading out towards the spectator. But the element of red is always sufficiently strong to keep the colour from flippancy. Orange is like a man, convinced of his own powers…

“Just as orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow, so violet is red withdrawn from humanity by blue. But the red in violet must be cold, for the spiritual need does not allow of a mixture of warm red with cold blue.

“Violet is therefore both in the physical and spiritual sense a cooled red. It is consequently rather sad and ailing. It is worn by old women, and in China as a sign of mourning…

“The two last mentioned colours (orange and violet) are the fourth and last pair of antitheses of the primitive colours. They stand to each other in the same relation as the third antitheses—green and red—i.e., as complementary colours” (p35-41).

Appearing in the Boston Herald, Sunday, May 10, 1931. Cells originally composed in a three-by-three grid.

Head of Buddha from Daianji Temple, Japan, Tempyo period, 8th century, p110. “Even in its ruinous condition this head possesses the classic serenity of expression and feeling for sculptured mass that characterized the great masterpieces of Tempyo sculptures” (p142).

“Many Japanese Buddha images… are informed with a feeling of expansive volume described by the Japanese term ryo, which approximates the suggestion of the presence of an inner breath or pneumatic force…” (p31).

From key two, the wedding of Apollo and Diana (p16). Click for larger version.

“This [emblem] shows Diana [the moon goddess] seated on the tomb of her dear husband Apollo [the sun god], where his ashes have been enclosed, which she swallows as a sign of the overwhelming love she bears him. Her garments shine with all the colours found in nature. Hercules is to be found on one side of the sepulchre, and Vulcan on the other. I shall explain what takes place in the glass sphere during the multiplication, which lasts about nine or ten months. Here Vulcan represents the external fire and Hercules the patience of the practitioner which overcomes all obstacles. The fixed remains in the bottom of the egg and all the liquid gradually becomes viscous, but before its total coagulation one may see through the view holes of the athanor or furnace, in a glimmer of light, all the colours of nature. One must not dwell on these, especially as they are not real, proceeding as they do from a reflection of light. It is after the conjunction of our two beautiful and precious substances has taken place that can be seen in due time in a far more marvellous fashion all the colours of the rainbow, mainly the blessed green, an infallible sign of the vegetable nature of our Stone…” (p17, translated from the French).

DiStasi’s Mal Occhio, title page.

“In the excavation of Tel Brak, a site in the Khabur Valley of eastern Syria, M. E. L. Mallowan uncovered a temple which he named the Eye Temple. The name came, logically enough, from the thousands of alabaster figurines found there in which the eyes were the completely dominant feature. The level at which these figurines were found was dated by Mallowan at 3,000 B.C. — the very dawn of civilization. This was the protohistoric period in Mesopotamia, the Jemdat-Nasr period, when writing had just begun. It was contemporary with the First Dynasty of Egypt and the earliest Minoan culture on Crete. The find of eye figurines has prompted numerous speculations on their nature and purpose, and the predictable debate about whether they were amulets or symbols or idols has arisen…” (Potts’s The World’s Eye, p2).

Mallowan’s drawings, reproduced in Potts, p2.

Originally appearing in Eduard Seler’s 1904 Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Amerikanischen Sprach- und Alterthumskunde vol. 2, figure 110a.

Tantra asana is a “yogic practice of transcending the human condition. Tantra itself is unique for being a synthesis of bhoga and yoga, enjoyment and liberation. There is no place for renunciation or denial in Tantra. Instead, we must involve ourselves in all the life processes which surround us. The spiritual is not something that descends from above, rather it is an illumination that is to be discovered within.

“Also fundamental in Tantrism is the notion of identity of the human body (anda), the microcosm, with the universe or macrocosm (brahmanda). Tantra holds that the body is the abode of truth, the epitome of the universe; and so man contains within himself, the truth of the whole cosmos. Therefore, the body, with its physiological and physical processes, becomes the perfect medium (yantra) to attain truth. ‘He who realizes the truth of the body can then come to know the truth of the universe’, says Ratnasara” (p15-16).

“Asana is visualized [in the painting above] as the pattern of forces sattva, rajas, and tamas [the three gunas], symbolized by the colours yellow, red and black along with the colourless white of cosmic consciousness — that principle which stays forever motionless, yet acts through its own radiation —, generates all forms of manifestation. The squares complete the suggestion that all this is ‘within’” (p136).

Compare with the coloration of the Classical four elemental processes (see previous post):

Mouravieff corrects Ouspensky’s diagram (see previous post), “which is the most important diagram for all who begin studying esotericism. We can see at first glance that it is not complete, and in addition, it contains grave errors” (p27).

Mouravieff’s correction, p31.

In the corrected diagram above, “the [black] arrows represent the influences created in life by life itself. This is the first kind of influence, called ‘A’ influence. It should be noted that the black arrows cover the surface of the circle of life almost evenly.

“Their effect, as with all radiant forces of nature, is inversely proportional to the square of the distance; that is why man is mainly influenced by the arrows closest to him, so that he find himself drawn at any moment by the result of the present moment. The influence of the ‘A’ arrows on involving man is compulsive; driven by them, he wanders within the circle of his life from birth until death.

“The totality of these ‘A’ influences forms the law of accident, and human fate comes under its rule. But if we examine the diagram more closely we will see that each black arrow is neutralised or counterbalanced by another arrow elsewhere that is equal in force and diametrically opposite in direction, so that had the arrows been left to neutralize each other, the general result would equal zero. This means that, taken as a whole, the ‘A’ influences are of an illusory nature, though their effect is real, and for this reason involving man generally takes them for the only reality in life” (p31).

‘E’ represents “the esoteric center, outside the general laws of life” (p32).

‘B’ influences “are thrown into the turmoil of life by the Esoteric Center. These different influences, which have been created outside life are represented in the diagram by white arrows. They are all oriented towards the same direction. Taken together they form a kind of magnetic field.

“Since the ‘A’ influences neutralise each other, the ‘B’ influences form the only reality in life.

“A man taken in isolation… is represented in the schematic diagram by a finely partitioned circle the surface area of which is crossed by fine diagonal lines except for the small clear area. This means that involving man’s nature is not homogeneous; it is a mixture.

“If a man spends his life without distinguishing between ‘A’ and ‘B’ influences, he will end it in the same way as he began — that is to say, mechanically, moved by the law of accident” (p32).

“Every individual is subject to a kind of preparatory test in life. If he is able to discern the ‘B’ influences and their existence, if he enjoys the taste of gathering them and absorbing them, and if he aspires to assimilate them more and more, then his interior nature, which began as a mixture, will, step by step, begin to undergo a certain evolution. Then, if his efforts to absorb the ‘B’ influences are constant and strong enough, a magnetic center begins to form inside him. That magnetic center is represented in the diagram by the small white area.

“If, once born in him and carefully developed, that center embodies itself, then it will exert an influence on the action of the ‘A’ arrows which are, of course, still functioning. This will lead to a change of direction. This deviation may be violent. It normally goes against the general laws of life, provoking conflicts in and around him. If he loses this battle he will emerge with the conviction that the ‘B’ influences are only an illusion, and that the only reality is represented by the ‘A’ influences. Step by step, the magnetic center that has been formed inside him will be re-absorbed and disappear. After this, his new situation will be worse than it was before he had first begun to discern the ‘B’ influences.

“But if he wins that first fight, his magnetic center, consolidated and reinforced, will attract him to a man of ‘C’ influence — stronger than he is and in possession of a stronger magnetic center than his own. Thus, by way of succession, since the man he had met has a relationship with a man of ‘D’ influence, he in his turn will be linked with the Esoteric Center ‘E’.

“From then on, that man will no longer be isolated in life. He will, of course, continue to live as he did before subject to the action of the ‘A’ influences, which will still exert their dominance upon him for a long time; yet, step by step, and thanks to the effect of the chain of influences B-C-D-E, his magnetic center will develop more and more and to the degree that his magnetic center grows he will evade the domination of the law of accident to enter the domain of consciousness” (p32-33).

“Wouldn’t it be interesting, if the world were structured according to the diagram [above]…

“Light itself consists of energy and ch’i.

“Quantum properties of Light are the refractions of its mass-energy component. Continua are the refractors of its massless ch’i.

“It’s no wonder that a Sanskrit root for Time is Light.

“Energy and mass, inanimate — we call it visible, existent, actual.

“Ch’i, our animate — we call invisible and nonexistent, useful.

“Organism is the active unity. Serenity reflects the active harmony.

“Life is an ongoing metabolism modifying ch’i.

“Evolution trends toward ever greater elegance of function.

“Mental illness follows the uncoupling, shunting, or deranging of selected pathways. Death ensues upon the loss of such a metabolic capability, as remnants then revert to inanimate dust.

“The origin of Life does not lie in the synthesis of a specific molecule, which has been arbitrarily defined to be organic.

“Such a change remains inanimate.

“Life arose with the first separation of the ch’i from Light in an assimilable form.

“Every species possesses a characteristic range of capacities for transforming ch’i.

“Normal offspring are endowed at birth with the lower threshold values; the ability to absorb and transform ch’i then increases with experience and with maturity. There is a steady change in the amount and variety of ch’i available from outside sources; and this, in turn, transmutes the former baseline for metabolism, giving rise to yet another series of resulting ch’i. The new ch’i then serves as the raw material for the succeeding process. Each exposure to a novel form of ch’i increases the proficiency of the inherited metabolizing apparatus.

“The metabolizing apparatus thereby constitutes one’s personality; its metabolic scope prescribes the fullness of one’s livingness; the extension of its scope accounts for creativity.

“There is a wide assortment of means by which the ch’i may enter into the being of the living.

“Primitive forms are continually incarnated in the tissues of green plants in photosynthesis, and these subsequently enter through the mouth as food.

“More sophisticated forms come through the ear, eye, mind, and a multitude of diverse and simultaneous communication channels, as compatibility allows.

“There is no past ch’i or future ch’i.

“Just as former states of energy exist in energy, so former states of ch’i exist in ch’i. And just as later states of energy exist in energy, so later states of ch’i exist in ch’i.

“There is only ch’i with hysteresis and potentiality.

“Men speak of the id, the ego, and the superego.

“Id reminds us of the transporting of ch’i through multimedia among the organisms. Ego, of the processing of ch’i internally in organisms. Superego, of the forming of the virtual presences as higher forms of ch’i by man.

“Wholesomeness of living seems dependent on continuing adjustments of a multitude of delicate coherences with the Whole.

“When the animals evolved the talent to produce a virtual presence, they acquired a soul.

“Then there was a God to be adored.

“And an Adam was created.

“As production of virtual presences increases, man’s tie to the Real decreases.

“Soon, he praises innovation and inhuman courage. He invents thrills and excitements. He relies on myths and mysteries. He downgrades Nature with a reckless chisel.

“Life becomes the Grand Illusion.

“With facility in the manipulation of the virtual presences, the primal Superman was born.

“With perfection in the art, a second Lucifer took charge.

“It was then that man came to defy the Lord.

“The interminable conflict thrusting the virtual presences against the real intensifies.

“As the power of the virtual grows, human values ineluctably turn phony. As the rate of change accelerates they turn ephemeral. And doubt in self and gods both virtual and real then takes its toll.

“The twilight of a great civilization is at hand” (p16-20).

Semele, ca. 1921 (p78).

Ovid narrates the myth of Semele in his Metamorphoses (book 3), in which Hera (Iuno) avenges Semele’s conception of Dionysus (Bacchus) by Zeus (Ioue). The 1632 translation below is by George Sandys.

Now new occasions fresh displeasure moue:
For Semele was great with child by Ioue.
Then, thus shee [Iuno] scolds: O, what amends succeeds
Our lost complaints! I now will fall to deeds.
If we be more then titularly great;
If we a Scepter sway; if heauen our seat;
If Ioue’s fear’d Wife and Sister (certainly,
His Sister) torment shall the Whore destroy.
Yet, with that theft perhaps she was content,
And quickly might the injurie repent:
But, shee conceiues, to aggrauate the blame,
And by her Belly doth her crime proclaime.
Who would by Iupiter a Mother proue,
Which, hardly once, hath hapned to our loue:
So confident is beautie! Yet shall she
Faile in that hope: nor let me Iuno be,
Vnlesse, by her owne Ioue destroy’d, shee make
A swift descent vnto the Stygian Lake.
Shee quits her throne, and in a yellow clowd
Approach’t the Palace; nor dismist that shrowd,
Till shee had wrinkled her smooth skin, and made
Her head all gray: while creeping feete conuay’d
Her crooked lims; her voice small, weake, and hoarce,
Like Beroe of Epidaure, her Nurse.
Long talking; at the mention of Ioues name,
She sigh’t, and said; Pray heauen, he proue the same!
Yet much I feare: for many oft beguile
With that pretext, and chastest beds defile.
Though Ioue; that’s not enough. Giue he a signe
Of his affection, if he be diuine:
Such, and so mighty, as when pleasure warmes
His melting bosome, in high Iuno’s armes;
With thee, such and so mighty, let him lie,
Deckt with the ensignes of his deitie.
Thus shee aduiz’d the vnsuspecting Dame;
Who beggs of Ioue a boone without a name.
To whom the God: Choose, and thy choyce possesse;
Yet, that thy diffidencie may be lesse,
Witnesse that Powre, who through obscure aboads
Spreads his dull streames: the feare, and God of Gods.
Pleas’d with her harme, of too much powre to moue!
That now must perish by obsequious loue:
Such be to me, she said, as when the Inuites
Of Iuno summon you to Venus Rites.
Her mouth he sought to stop: but, now that breath
Was mixt with ayre which sentenced her death.
Then fetch’t a sigh; as if his breast would teare
(For, she might not vnwish, nor he vnsweare)
And sadly mounts the skie; who with him tooke:
The Clouds, that imitate his mournefull looke;
Thick showrs and tempests adding to the same,
Low’d thunder and ineuitable flame.
Whose rigor yet he striueth to subdew:
Not armed with that fire which ouerthrew
The hundred-handed Giant; ’twas too wilde:
There is another lightning, far more milde,
By Cyclops forged with lesse flame and ire:
Which, deathlesse Gods doe call the Second fire.
This, to her Father’s house, he with him tooke
But (ah!) a mortall body could not Brooke
Aethereall tumults. Her successe she mournes;
And in those so desir’d imbracements burnes.
Th’ vnperfect Babe, which in her wombe did lie,
Was ta’ne by Ioue, and sew’d into his thigh,
His Mother’s time accomplishing: Whom first,
By stealth, his carefull Aunt, kinde Ino, nurst
Then, giuen to the Nyseides, and bred
In secret Caues, with milke and hony fed.
While this on earth befell by Fates decree
(The twice-borne Bacchus now from danger free)…

“Continuity. Between two different grays it is always possible to insert a third gray, which is lighter than one and darker than the other. In this manner the steps can be made even smaller, until they finally become imperceptible.

“It probably follows that the complete gray series consists of an infinite number of steps. However, if one places between two terminal points a series of gray sheets, each of which is just noticeably lighter than the previous one, it will be found that one cannot discern an infinite number of intermediate steps. Rather, a finite difference is necessary if one is to distinguish a series of grays, and if the steps become very small, differences can no longer be discerned.

“The Threshold. This border between just noticeable difference in color is called the threshold” (p20-21).

“Thus, there is between 13 and 14 a just noticeable difference, while between 15 and 16 there is an unnoticeable difference. Even though 16 is a trifle weaker than 15, they both appear equally as light” (p21).

“Equality. Only the presence of the threshold makes it possible for us to regard two gray colors as equal. What we cannot distinguish we call equal [my emphasis]. Even if we could recognize every difference that actually existed (in gradations) it would be impossible to create two equal grays, as we could never remove the last traces of the actually existing differences. In effect, we will regard two gray colors such as 15 and 16 as equal, even though an objective difference between them has intentionally been created.

“The presence of the threshold has certain consequences with regard to the apparent equality of colors. These consequences are different from the mathematical relationships that are usually established when no regard is paid to the threshold. For example, in general this law applies: if a = b and b = c, then a = c. And it also follows that from a = b, b = c, c = d, that a = d. Now, if gray b is indeed lighter than a, but by less than the threshold, and if the same applies between c and b, and between d and c, we would first state a = b, b = c, and c = d. But if the sum of these imperceptible differences exceeds the limits of the normal threshold, then we could by no means say that a = d, but we would experience d as lighter than a” (p21-22).

“Thus, there exists a difference between steps 17 and 18 that is smaller than the threshold. Therefore, if steps 19 and 20 are covered, 17 and 18 will appear equal. Similarly, 18 and 19 appear equal if 17 and 20 are covered, and the same applies to 19 and 20. We have observed, therefore: 17 = 18, 18 = 19, and 19 = 20 and are thus inclined to conclude also that 20 = 17. However, if we cover 18 and 19 and compare 20 and 17, step 20 is unmistakably lighter than 17.

“Incidentally, the threshold is not an invariable value, as it often has a different value with different persons. Much depends on visual ability; in some individuals the threshold may increase or shrink through exercise or through fatigue and other weakening influences. For this reason, some will not experience the difference between steps 13 and 14, while others will notice a difference between 15 and 16. The number of distinguishable steps of gray under normal conditions amounts to several hundred” (p23).

Emblem 9 (of 12) from the 1752 Hermaphrodite Child of the Sun and Moon by unknown alchemist L.C.S., reproduced by Adam McLean (p42).

Translates Mike Brenner in McLean’s edition: “A soaring eagle with heart aflame, with the Sun and Moon at the threshold of its wings, bears tokens of dominion: the crown of influence, the sceptre of the king, and the globe of the empress.

“Its buoyancy in flight and its flaming heart show the ethereal nature of this eagle: wet outside, fire inside. It is our Liquid Mercury.

“The Sun and Moon seek solace under the shadow of these wings, basking in the pleasing radiation from the flaming heart.

“To win the Crown of the Earth, fuse the power of the sceptre and the globe…” (p42).

Copperplate 7 (of 19) from Johann Conrad Barchusen’s 1718 Elementa chemiae, appearing in Johannes Fabricius’s 1976 collection, Alchemy (p18).

Comments Fabricius: In plate 7 “the deluge [cf. the biblical Flood] leaves only a small patch of land, on which the Hermes bird descends [beneath the symbol of Mercury]. The chaotic situation is emphasized by the emergence of the seven planets on the horizon, a symbol of universal disorder. As indicated by the sign of sulphur, the sinking island is set on fire by sulphurous flames from the hellish interior of the earth. Yet the alchemist’s sinking island is ‘supported’ by a sealed chest of drawers emerging from the sea and containing immense riches of silver and gold. Although the adept’s world has become a sinking island, it has been simultaneously transformed into a treasure island” (p18).

Second woodcut of the 1550 Rosarium philosophorum, also appearing in Fabricius’s Alchemy (p24).

In this depiction “the king, standing atop the sun and representing the spiritus, meets the bride of his choice, resting on the moon and representing the anima. The rose branches crossed by king and queen bear out their mutual love, but the court clothes suggest the restrained nature of their initial encounter.

“The two roses at the end of each branch refer to the four elements, two of which are active and masculine (fire and air), while two are passive and feminine (water and earth). Their ordered arrangement in a ‘rosie cross’ suggests the abatement of the prima materia and its warring elements. The fifth flower is brought by the dove of the Holy Ghost, a parallel of Noah’s dove carrying the olive branch of reconciliation in its beak. Descending from the quintessential star, the bird reconciles the masculine and feminine elements, just as its third branch equates the rose branches with the three pipes of the mercurial fountain, now transformed into a stem of roses.

“The dove is the agent effecting the rapprochement between king and queen, just as the bird indicates the spiritual and heavenly nature of their love. The unusual character of this affair is further stressed by the partners’ left-handed contact. This uncustomary gesture points to the closely guarded secret of their infringement of a general taboo. Actually, the royal couple engages in ‘unnatural’ and illegitimate love, the secret of which is of an incestuous nature: the bride is the king’s own sister. Hence the ‘Rosarium’ admonishes: ‘Mark well, in the art of our magisterium nothing is concealed by the philosophers except the secret of the art…’” (p24).

Thought process, 1969. Click for larger version.

Writes Soavi, on his visit to Folon’s country house outside Paris: “A view is unseizable when one can never see it all at once. One only has to weigh the words carefully: ‘vue imprenable.’ What horizons! Poetic; that is, invented. Measureless, therefore without men; exalting, therefore unreal or, at most, painted in a fantastic manner.

“I [Soavi] walked by his [Folon's] side — we had left my suitcases in the fields — through immensely long meadows now reduced to a kind of undergrowth only an inch or two high but as hard as iron. Nothing yielded at all beneath our weight, so it was quite a job to stay on our feet, and the colour of things around us was not as beautiful as it might have been. Far away in the distance, perhaps, everything was a bit better: there was a faint blue mist, and evening was beginning to fall. The best place to walk was the dirt road, but on that a boy of about twelve, as happy as Larry, was going back and forth, practising driving a tractor.”

“Fire and heat provide modes of explanation in the most varied domains, because they have been for us the occasion for unforgettable memories, for simple and decisive personal experiences. Fire is thus a privileged phenomenon which can explain anything. If all that changes slowly may be explained by life, all that changes quickly is explained by fire. Fire is the ultra-living element. It is intimate and it is universal. It lives in our heart. It lives in the sky. It rises from the depths of the substance and offers itself with the warmth of love. Or it can go back down into the substance and hide there, latent and pent-up, like hate and vengeance. Among all phenomena, it is really the only one to which there can be so definitely attributed the opposing values of good and evil. It shines in Paradise. It burns in Hell. It is gentleness and torture. It is cookery and it is apocalypse… It is well-being and it is respect. It is a tutelary and terrible divinity, both good and bad. It can contradict itself; thus it is one of the principles of universal explanation” (p7).

“One of the most obvious phenomenological contradictions was brought about by the discovery of alcohol — a triumph of the thaumaturgical activity of human thought. Brandy, or eau-de-vie, is also eau de feu or fire-water. It is a water which burns the tongue and flames up at the slightest spark. It does not limit itself to dissolving and destroying as does aqua fortis. It disappears with what it burns. It is the communion of life and of fire. Alcohol is also an immediate food which quickly warms the cockles of the heart…

“Since brandy burns before our entranced eyes, since, from the pit of the stomach, it radiates heat to the whole person, it affords proof of the convergence of inner experience and objective experiment. This double phenomenology prepares complexes that a psychoanalysis of objective knowledge will be obliged to eliminate in order to rediscover a true freedom of experiment. Among these complexes there is one which is quite special and quite powerful; it is the one which, so to speak, closes the circle; when the flame has run across the alcohol, when the fire has left its mark and sign, when the primitive fire-water has become clearly enriched with shining, burning flames, then we drink it. Only brandy, of all the substances in the world, is so close to being of the same substance as fire.

“In my youth, at the time of the great winter festivals, they used to prepare a brûlot (brandy burnt with sugar). My father would pour into a wide dish some marc-brandy produced from our own vineyard. In the center he would place pieces of broken sugar, the biggest ones in the sugar bowl. As soon as the match touched the tip of the sugar, a blue flame would run down to the surface of the alcohol with a little hiss. My mother would extinguish the hanging lamp. It was the hour of mystery, a time when a note of seriousness was introduced into the festivity. Familiar faces, which suddenly seemed strange in their ghastly paleness, were grouped about the round table. From time to time the sugar would sputter before its pyramid collapsed; a few yellow fringes would sparkle at the edges of the long pale flames. If the flames wavered and flickered, father would stir at the brûlot with an iron spoon. The spoon would come out sheathed in fire like an instrument of the devil. Then we would ‘theorize’: to blow out the flames too late would mean concentrating less fire and consequently diminishing the beneficent action of the brûlot again influenza. One of the watchers would tell of a brûlot that burned down to the last drop… At all costs we were bent of finding an objective and a general meaning for the exceptional phenomenon . . . Finally the brûlot would be in my glass: hot and sticky, truly an essence… When, after the spectacle, we savored the delightful taste of the drink, we were left with unforgettable memories of the occasion. Between the entranced eye and the comfortably-glowing stomach was established a Baudelairien correspondence that was all the stronger since it was all the more materialized…

“If one has not had a personal experience of this hot sugared alcohol that has been born of flame at some joyful midnight festivity, one has little understanding of the romantic value of punch; one is deprived of a diagnostic method of studying certain phantasmagorical poems… The loves of Phosphorus and the Lily illustrate the poetry of fire (third evening):

‘…desire, which is developing a beneficent heat throughout your whole being, will soon plunge into your heart a thousand sharp darts; for . . . the supreme pleasure that is being kindled by this spark I am placing within you is the hopeless grief that will make you perish only to germinate again in a different form. This spark is thought!’ ‘Alas!’ sighed the flower in a plaintive tone, ‘Since such an ardor now enflames me, can I not be yours?’

“In the same story when the witchcraft, which was to have brought back the student Anselme to the poor Veronica, is completed, there is nothing left ‘but a light flame rising from the spirits of wine which burn in the bottom of the cauldron.’ Later in the story the salamander, Lindhorst, goes in and out of the bowl of punch; the flames in turn absorb him and reveal him. The battle between the witch and salamander is a battle of flames; the snakes come out of the tureen filled with punch. Madness and intoxication, reason and enjoyment are constantly presented in combination. From time to time there appears in the stories a worthy bourgeois who would like ‘understand’ and who says to the student:

‘How did this cursed punch manage to go to our heads and cause us to commit a thousand follies?’ These were the words of Professor Paulmann when on the following morning he entered the room that was still strewn with broken mugs, in the midst of which the unfortunate periwig, reduced to its primary elements, was floating about, dissolved in an ocean of punch.

“Thus the rationalized explanation, the bourgeois explanation, the explanation through a confession of drunkenness, is brought in to moderate the phantasmagorical visions, so that the tale appears as being half rational, half dream, as partly subjective experience and partly objective perception, at once plausible in its cause and unreal in its effect” (p83-86).

“As we have seen… inner fire is dialectical in all its properties… As soon as a sentiment rises to the tonality of fire, as soon as it becomes exposed in its violence to the metaphysics of fire, one can be sure that it will become charged with opposites. When this occurs, the person in love wishes to be pure and ardent, unique and universal, dramatic and faithful, instantaneous and permanent. Confronted with the dreadful temptation, the Pasiphaé of Vielé-Griffin murmurs: A hot breath inflames my cheeks, a glacial chill turns me to ice…” (p111-112).

Black figure skyphos with gods, ca. 500 B.C.E (plate III). Click for larger version.

“Although the canonical four color grouping of black, white, red, and yellow is not documented in ancient literature before the first half of the fifth century, it can easily be noticed that these same four colors, separately, together, or in mixtures giving the so-called earth colors, predominate not merely in Greece but all through early cultures. The Greeks, specifically the Attic ceramic craftsmen, had a special relationship to this ‘canon’ in that they refined their color choice, presumably out of a passionate attachment to it, to a glossy black and orange-red as an aesthetic norm. Beings and objects in the pictorial freeze [e.g., above] are shown in black, suggesting the obvious conclusion that this color represents the corporeality, the density, of earth substance. And the frieze itself, be it noted, is reserved in the black density of the pot, also fire earth-substance.

“The orange frieze used in black figure work misses maximum contrast value with the black, so why was it chosen? Perhaps a kind of instinctive insight has always led people to refer to red, or reddish hues, as the color of life… In the circumstances we are considering… the reddish hue can really only represent air (atmosphere), in which all beings and things are bathed. For example if we consider animals or men, they unremittingly draw in life force for the blood through breathing air, whereupon the blood maintains both physical and emotional existence. Red, therefore, represents the air on the macrocosmic plane and in the extended microcosmic sense it represents soul life.

“We can now take stock. The two opposite fix-points, earth-air, provide a contrast that is more spatial than dynamic, for earth and air are fundamentally contiguous, and in an undisturbed state do not act on one another but simply preside over, as it were, the spheres of below and above, respectively. (Fire and water, on the other hand, are by nature hostile to one another, eliminate themselves when, forced together, they must attack each other.) Just as in the relationship of earth and air, the colors black and red have a complementary, not an adversarial, relationship, and it cannot be accidental that as prismatic colors of the Dark spectrum, black and red are precisely contiguous. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition is decisive: black is heavy, immobile, hence can function as support; red as a chromatic color has also a certain density but, as Goethe already noted, it is the least mobile color, so that without forcing a point we could say that it hovers over black. In this way once can feel why the Archaic painters remained so long satisfied with this combination: it gave superb expression to their passionate pursuit of physical reality in a way that no other color and background, e.g., white, could have.

“During the Archaic and Protoclassical periods the Ionian philosophers consistently pondered the nature of the elements on the basis of the polarity principle. Similarly, the colors black and white were seen as polar opposites, like cold and warm, but these colors could not be connected with the actual pair of polar opposites in the elements (fire and water) in view of the factors discussed above. Indeed, apart from black-earth, we shall find that a little leeway must be allowed in assigning color to elements (even red-air). In any case, at this point fire and water are open to appointment to white and yellow. According to the criterion of density already established [in the previous post], yellow, visually the stronger of the two colors, will go to water, the denser element, leaving white for fire (warmth) as the most rarefied substance of all (just as Empedokles took for granted).

“Yellow accordingly is the expression of the principle of fluidity, the functional principle (circulatory system) of the earth planet and all its creatures. Yellow therefore can be called the active color par excellence… White, on the other hand, characterizes the element which is the least physical — which in fact can almost not be conceived of except as an invisible connective (warmth) of the other elements. And indeed on the visual plane white is passive, lacking specific expressionality. It does not in any sense importune us but kindly provides without preconditions an empty space for inner freedom. This makes it highly suitable to represent, at the macrocosmic level, the sphere of pure thought, the goal of nous; the relative loftiness of this sphere may suggest, but does not compel, a connection to the Godhead. I say not compel because the Godhead is logically prior to and beyond all color. Moreover, white can be sullied by the admixture of impure elements, as can pure reason” (p31-33).

“Having established a structured visual paradigm for the relationship of the four elements among themselves [see previous post], we can now consider the associated colors when the paradigms are repeated to show the effects of the respective dominant process… [As] Empedokles himself envisioned: ‘Those elements and forces are to be understood as equally strong and coeval, yet each of them has a different function, each has its own characteristic and in the rounds of time they take their turn being dominant” (p46).

Macrocosmic progressions (p47). Click for larger version.

Fire is the creative principle in (B), (C), (D), hence white; it materializes only in (A), hence red (physical).

Air expands in (A), (B), hence yellow and increases its efforts to do so in (D) hence really a deeper yellow; it loses this quality by taking on weight in (C), hence red (immobility).

Water is the least stable in color. In (A) it is white (diminshingly physical). In (B) water signifies (retains) liquidity even in distillation (oxygen) hence red, yet it also becomes gaseous (hydrogen) thus tending toward yellow; in (C) it achieves maximum movement (yellow) and in (D) it tends toward immobility (red).

Earth is always stable to the extent that it remains the darker part in any condition. In principle, yellow is the color of dispersal, black of concentration, red of intensity or arrested movement and white of non-physicality or minimal physicality.

In all cases the colors share the tendency of the elements to mix themselves constantly and must therefore be taken as in constant gradation from one to the other.

“It must be emphasized that the progressions in [the figure above] relate to the macrocosmos, that is, more precisely, the universal, external and objective — as it were — basis of physical/physiological processes… [Whereas] the implications of elements and colors on the specific level of the human being, whose form and functions — physical, physiological, psychological and mental/moral — constantly interact with the macrocosmos. This is shown in [the figure below]” (p46-47).

Microcosmic progressions (p48). Click for larger version.

Earth is implcit in life processes at all stages providing physicality or its shadow, hence always black.

Water is more subject to movement in (F)-(G), hence yellow but more balanced and stable in (E) and (H), hence red.

Air is more subject to movement in (E) and (H), hence yellow but more stable and dense in (F) and (G), hence red.

Fire is the invisible presupposition of all processes, hence white throughout.

“In structuring the macrocosmic pictures, I employed… the hierarchical evolutionary principle of organization: fire, air, water and earth (as solid matter, the finished product of evolution). By contrast, since the psychological and mental/moral effects of interaction can be realized only by an individual consciousness, the microscopic series is therefore organized according to the biological principle. The order is exactly reversed since the human being begins with earth (physicality) at birth and rises in the end (ideally) to mental/moral ripeness” (p49).

“For the purpose of this study, it is essential to invent a ‘picture’ that can also suggest in spatial terms the concept of the miscibility (krasis) of the [four] elements, since these were understood by the ancients to be processes whereby a constant metamorphosis of the visual configuration of the world at any moment is actually taking place. The descriptive determination of such momentary states lies with two pairs of opposing conditions: hot-cold and wet-dry. These qualities in effect give the parameters of two of the elements, fire and water, whereby it can concluded that fire and water have a particular axial quality, a central governing position in the total concept of four.

“The most obvious and striking aspect of this relationship is, as already suggested, the uncontested polarity of fire and water. The archenemy of fire is water; equally, fire opposes water but with much less immediate impact and finality. Fire is quenched by water; water is evaporated (goes into air) by fire. This stronger quality of water allows it to determine how to pictorialize the relationship. Since the inalienable tendency of water is to seek the horizontal, we may use a horizontal line, whereby the placement of fire and water to left or right is still to be discussed: liquefaction opposes combustion” (p36-7).

“With this given, a second less dramatic but equally inescapable polarity remains: earth and air. Their normal relationship is to be contiguous, with the earth below and the air above… This relationship is logically to be illustrated by a vertical line: condensation opposes rarefaction” (p37).

“Given the interaction of the four elements observable by the senses, we can now cross the two lines” (p38).

“Whereas the position of A and E is given by physical characteristics, the placement of fire and water involves the relationship of left and right. Therefore the science and the laws of picture-making, if there be such, must meet and interact. There is no left and right bias in fire and water as such, but there is a fundamental difference between left and right visually… It was the merit of Vassily Kandinsky, acting on a suggestion of Goethe, to have conceptualized the picture plane as an area — blank or not — that is alive with tensions of weight. Indeed, that plane is an excerpt of each observer’s bodily relationship to the horizontal-vertical conditions of earthly existence. Thus the horizontal and vertical represent, respectively, earth’s plan from L to R and space from up to down. This visual resistance experienced in a defined rectangular pictorial space is naturally strongest below and weakest above. The next strongest resistance (tension) is offered by the right side; this is reduced on the left side but not so much as up and down. Thus, there are four degrees of density (sc. visual density) as represented by the following scheme” (p38):

“The applicability of Kandinsky’s reasoning to the problem at hand, if any, must be axiomatic, as indeed all geometrical reasoning lies inextricably rooted in the human body/mind condition. We may therefore criticize the suggested scheme with fire and water inserted” (p39).

“No conflict exists in the vertical plan. The potential conflict is in the horizontal. Although W is correctly placed on the right in relation to A and E, fire cannot easily be related to density in the sense of the other three. That is because, in contrast to ancient (and some current esoteric) thought that warm is a (primeval) substance, present scientific thought sees fire (warmth) as a condition of other substances. In terms of our picture, a resolution of this dilemma may be sought in regarding the elements not as substances but as processes, where there can be no conflict. In this sense we then have the completed diagram as follows” (p39-40):

“Taking into account again Kandinsky’s criteria and visualizing the results of the four processes in terms of changes of density in weighable and measurable materials of earth existence, combustion is clearly in the right position. Combustion can lighten matter, leaving ashes which are lighter than water or earth but still ultimately heavier than air; and on the other hand it may intensify the process of rarefaction and thus contribute to lightness.

“The next problem is to show the opposing pairs of elements in descriptive sense-analytical terms of early thought. These are described by Empedokles as hot/cold and wet/dry. The existence of four quadrants allows us to arrange these terms in the sense of equally balancing contrasts” (p40):

“N.B. the data about the elements contained in [the above diagram] can also be rendered, and more conveniently, by attaching the information about hot/cold and wet/dry to the vectors, as in the diagram below” (p43), a unified picture of the four elements theory:

“The persistent implication in the method of constructing the picture of the Four Elements theory… namely, that this is an irreducible explanation of earthly realities valid for all of humanity, requires a further comment. The elements qua substance require to be thought of as occupying real space: they are in a sense the planet we live on, they are our own body/mind entity. As such they are Being. But they are also synonymous with processes, so that one could just as well speak of the four processes theory — and as such they belong to the realm of time: they are Becoming. There is evidence that the Greeks themselves conceived of this latter idea without, however, living so much in consciousness of the technical potentialities of the processes which dominate our minds, but rather in the blessedness of feeling the processes as earthly projections of realities inherent in higher worlds. Nowhere is this so explicitly put as in a dialogue of Plutarch (De Defectu Oraculorum, 10):

Others (other authors) say, there is a transmutation of bodies as well as of souls; and that, just as we see of the earth is engendered water, of the water air, and of the air fire, the nature of substance still ascending higher, so good spirits always change for the best, being transformed from men into heroes, and from heroes into Daemons; and from Daemons, by degrees and in a long space of time, a few souls being refined and purified come to partake of the nature of the Divinity.

“If we consider this passage in microscopic terms, the reference to men, whose highest earthly member is nous (fire) [see following post], translates into an overlapping of the circle of the four elements by a higher circle of which nous is the lowest member with three stages above it, each of a finer and more (spiritually) rarefied nature: heroes, Daemons, and the Divine itself. The result of this merger of Heaven as the fifth element and fourfold man is therefore a sevenfold picture in all” (p43-4).

From chapter three (bipeds). Click for larger version.

From chapter eleven (architecture). Click for larger version.

From chapter two (fauna). Click for larger version.

“These three figures are said to be most ‘fecund’, not only for geometry but for all sciences and for contemplating and operating” (p314).

Figura Mentis, p307. C.f. Cusanus’s paradigmatic diagram and the mouth of Ra.

“There is… a ‘supernal triad’, consisting of the Father, or mind, or plenitude; of the Son, or the primal intellect; of Light which is the spirit of all things, or the anima mundi… ‘Ancient theologians,’ Bruno continues, understand by the Father, mind or mens, who generates intellect, or the Son, between them being fulgor, or light or love. Hence one may contemplate in the Father, the essence of essences; in the Son the beauty and love of generating; in fulgor, or light, the spirit pervading and vivifying all. Thus a triad may be imagined; ‘pater, mens; filium verbum; et per verbum, universa sunt producta’. From mens proceeds intellectus; from intellectus proceeds affectus or love. Mens sits above all; intellectus sees and distributes all; love makes and disposes all. This last is light or fulgor which fills all things and is diffused through all. Whence it is called the anima mundi and spiritus universorum, and is that of which Virgil spoke when he said ‘spiritus intus alit’” (p309-310).

Figura Intellectus, p307.

“A remarkable feature of [Bruno's] De monade is the use which [he] makes in it of Cecco d’Ascoli’s necromantic commentary on the Sphere of Sacrobosco… The longest quotation from Cecco comes when Bruno is discussing ten, the number sacred to the ten Sephiroth. He mentions these, but later describes orders of demons or spirits whose hierarchies can be contemplated in the intersection of circles. ‘These (the orders of demons) are contemplated in the intersection of circles, as Astophon says in libro Mineralium constellatorum. O how great, he says, is the power in the intersection of circles.’ This is a quotation of Cecco’s quotation from the Astophon who is to be heard of nowhere else and was probably invented by Cecco. It throws light on why intersecting circles are such a prominent feature in the diagrams by which Bruno represents his Hermetic trinity…” (p322-323).

Figura Amoris, p307.

“Light, says Bruno, is the vehicle in the inner world through which the divine images and intimations are imprinted, and this light is not that through which normal sense impressions reach the eyes, but an inner light joined to a most profound contemplation, of which Moses speaks, calling it ‘primogenita’, and of which Mercurius also speaks in Pimander. Here the Genesis-Pimander equation, so characteristic of the Hermetic-Cabalist tradition, is applied by Bruno to creation of the inner world” (p336).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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