PAUL LAFFOLEY: Catalogue Raisonne (in preparation) Since 1988, Douglas Walla and the Kent Gallery have been documenting the work of the Boston Visionary Cell founder, Paul Laffoley. Our first monograph entitled The Phenomenology of Revelation published in 1989 was a highly successful project with edited texts by the artist. It has been the focus of Laffoley and Kent to accompany each of the paintings with a descriptive text entitled thoughforms that makes note of systems and references referred to in each individual work. Each painting of Laffoley is conceived of as a Structured Singularity and typically have no preparatory drawings or paintings, and are not reproduced as prints or multiples. Subtopics in Laffoley's oeuvre include Operating Systems, Lucid Dreaming, Time Travel, Utopia, and Physically Alive Designs for Architecture. Formally educated in the classics, architecture, and philosophy, Laffoley creates a trans-disciplinary art for our time. If you have work by Paul Laffoley, we are very interested in having it included in this forthcoming compilation and publication. Please direct information and inquiries to Douglas Walla. PAUL LAFFOLEY: Catalogue Raisonne (in progress) Essays in preparation by: Linda Dalrymple Henderson Ariel Saiber Douglas Walla Thoughtforms presented are written and edited by Paul Laffoley TERMS OF USE: This website and its content is copyright of Kent Gallery, Inc. and Paul Laffoley. © Kent Gallery, Inc. and Paul Laffoley 2006. All rights reserved. You may view and print documents on this site subject to the following terms and conditions: 1. The document may be used solely for informational, personal, non-commercial purposes; 2. Any copy of the document or portion thereof must include all copyright and proprietary notices in the same form and manner as on the original; 3. The document may not be modified in any way; 4. The owner reserves the right to revoke such authorization at any time, and any such use shall be discontinued immediately upon notice. None of the materials provided on this web site may be used, reproduced or transmitted, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or the use of any information storage and retrieval system except as indicated above. To request reproduction and/or distribution permission and for further inquiries, please contact: Kent Gallery 541 West 25th Street New York, NY, 10001, USA kent@kentgallery.com Telephone: (+1) 212-627-3680 Facsimile: (+1) 212-627-3683 Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Mind Physics: The Burning of Samsara, 1967 Oil, Acrylic, Lettering on Canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: The Innate Theatricality of the Physical Universe Symbol Evocation: The Purifying Fire Comments: The term mind-physics, or the physics of consciousness, was first used by William James in the late Nineteenth Century. It has come to signify the unity, not just epistemic, but also the ontological unity of consciousness and matter. The implications of the scientific study of psychic phenomena, the Uncertainty Principle in quantum mechanics postulated by Werner Heisenberg, the Relativity Principle of Einstein, and the clairvoyant investigation of the subatomic realm all support the proposition of such unity. The main thesis of mind-physics holds that consciousness and matter are both manifestations of a more primary entity, and that the processes of manifestation exhibit equivalent invariances for both consciousness and matter. When the program for mind-physics is complete the subject-object dichotomy of modal logic, the polarity of concept-percept, and the antagonism between morality and technology will all come to an end. Then the non-repeatable experiment will be understood to be more primary than the traditional repeatable experiment. The historical precedent for this program is Mahayana Buddhism, which is based on non-modal logic and teaches that it is possible to penetrate the physical world, and to connect it directly with the metaphysical. The illusion of time, which is samsara and represented by the wheel of life, is dispelled in the fire of illumination, which is the reality of eternity or nirvana. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Urban Fossickated Octave, 1968 Oil, Acrylic, Ink, Lettering on Canvas 51 x 51 in. Subject: The Source of all that is Esoteric Symbol Evocation: The Second Chance Comments: The word fossick means to search for gold or gemstones, typically by picking over abandoned mines or workings. Every culture, philosophy or religion is based on the thought that somehow we (the human race) have been forsaken and that we still have the possibility of finding the path back home if we look again for clues in places that others have ignored or are not so brightly lit. An urban octave is the harmonious secret group of limited number that conducts that actual search. The image of the flying saucer is that of the alien that comes to help us out of our natural alienhood. Letter dated September 5, 1987 Now the painting that you want, the Urban Fossicated Octave, has a bizarre provenance which may interest you. Of all the paintings you could have chosen, that painting has the weirdest history: 1) It was first shown in 1969 at an exhibit called To the Esoteric Schools. At the opening, the painting next to it was attacked and stabbed and torn to shreds. 2) Next it was shown at a Black Panther meeting in the South-End of Boston. The house was Painted all flat black, and the painting fell off the wall three times. So we did a séance and discovered a girl had jumped off the roof of the building onto railroad tracks and died. She was trying to communicate with someone since 1910. The painting was purchased but the person never showed up to complete the purchase. 3) The painting was in a show at the Orsen Wells Cinema. Timothy Leary showed up and verbally attacked the painting “for being to humorous”. I never meant to be humorous or satirical about the content at all. 4) The painting was one of the 18 that were taken to the Woodstock Festival without my permission. It was stolen right away. But it was returned the next day. Some fellow there became very angry about the painting and we argued for two days about the content. Then I took off with any paintings before anyone found out. 5) One year later this same person came to my studio to apologize for the way he had acted and said he wanted to buy the painting. 6) Three years later, he came back with the painting and wanted to give it back to me as he wanted to disconnect with his past. He had been gay but was now straight with a three piece suite on and he was a lawyer, with three children. It seems he went to Salem, Massachusetts and became involved in a witchcult, someone in the coven had borrowed the painting. When it was returned to him, that person said it had been used in a blood sacrifice ritual. The fellow was really frightened and left in a hurry. The Urban Fossicated Octave was my first flying saucer painting. Paul Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Homage to Kiesler, 1968 Oil, Acrylic, Ink, Lettering on Canvas 37 1/2 x 37 1/2 in. Subject: Frederick Kiesler, Sculptor, Painter and Visionary Architect Symbol Evocation: The Search for Continuity in Nature Comments: In the early 1960's, right after my dismissal from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, I was compensated by fate in the form of a year's apprenticeship with Kiesler. Born in 1890 in Cernavti, Romania, he nevertheless claimed Vienna as his birthplace. He became the youngest member of the De Stijl Group in 1923. Arriving in America in 1926, he was quickly absorbed into the "permanent avant-garde" of New York City until his death in 1965. Known affectionately as the "Space" or "Egg Man"-- because he advocated curved shell over post and beam construction-- his major architectural work that was built is the Shrine of the Book or the Dead Sea Scrolls Museum in Jerusalem. The architect Philip Johnson always referred to Kiesler as the "greatest unbuilt" architect of the 20th century, but upon the occasion of Johnson's 90th birthday celebration which was held in 1996 at the Department of Architecture, Columbia University, Johnson rose before the assembled architects to declare that the thinking and visual forms of Kiesler would soon be entering the general practice of architecture. Johnson's remarks were actually briefer than my description. He got up and said, "Kiesler is next," and sat down-- this to an audience already stunned by the energy of a man entering his ninth decade. I have always thought of Kiesler as the prototype of the Bauharoque man, surviving by always "throwing hooks and lines into the future." During the year I spent in his public sculpture studio in Union Square, I worked on many of his important pieces in terms of final presentation for exhibitions. One day he called me "a dreamer." To this day I have not been able to decide whether I had received a compliment or an insult. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Number Dream, 1968 Oil, Acrylic, Ink and Letters on Canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 inches Comments: That the physical senses can provide an authentic advancement in knowledge is a truism. Dreams also can provide an advancement in knowledge. But the assumption is often held that knowledge obtained from the senses is inherently objective and that knowledge from visions and dreams is inherently subjective. Anyone who has ever witnessed the work of a really good stage magician or who has conversed at length with a psychotic or a psychopath learns very quickly about selective perception at its extreme, concerning oneself or others. True objectivity is the goal of Ancient Wisdom (the process that creates the integration of all knowledge and in doing so reveals its own principles of organization). On the one hand, what we have come to call science (methodological sensation) is one half of ancient wisdom and has been revived over the past 300 years. On the other hand, the visionary (or methodological revelation) has been eclipsed by the technological achievements of science to such an extent that we have experienced only the historical shards of its former integration, in concepts such as the A Priori of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), or practices such as astrology, the I Ching, the Yogas, or the Kabbalah, etc. There is, however, one form of the visionary that was revived as a creative practice by artists of the International Symbolist Movement (active between 1880-1910). The interpretation of dreams utilizes the discovery in the west (about 1893) of Tantric art and its use of what we call today as lucid dreaming. This hint was picked up by the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1940) when he wrote the own Interpretation of Dreams in 1899. He did however ignore the idea that one could be aware of the dream state while dreaming. Carl Jung (1875-1961), the disciple of Freud, absorbed to a greater extent the doctrines of Tantra. He used the prime symbol of Tantric art- the Mandala (circle with center and periphery) to analyze human nature and, in particular, dreams. Surrealism (1917- 1943)- the dream- oriented art movement that developed from Freud's work via the ideological control of the poet Andre Breton (1896- 1966), became the means to subtend the interpretation of dreams to appear to be derived from scientific bases only and not the visionary. In my painting "The Number Dream," I favor the influence of Jung over Freud and the Surrealists, but I also find Jung's ideas about dreams limited in other ways. For instance, Jung's theory of the archetypes of the collective unconscious, as forces that alter dream imagery, are confined to extent of human history. I believe not. I think the archetypes are inherent within the "basic stuff" of the universe. Mass and consciousness are but two of the expressions of the primordial. As an example, on October 25, 1995 I was shown images taken directly from the orbital Hubble space radio- telescope. The telescope was aimed at areas of sky free from optically received light. What the telescope did access, however, were the leading ends of light rays approximately 7000 light years from earth, that had been generated 2 billion years after the "Big Bang." When I saw the images of monstrous star gas clusters light years in extent I was astounded, not only because they resembled nothing that we associate with out present day universe (that is: 15 billion years after the "Big Bang"), but also because I had seen these exact images years ago in a lucid dream. This was personal proof to me that dreams can yield an advancement in knowledge and process information prior to the existence of human life or any life as we have come to define the term. That we are born of stardust or have stardust memories may be more fact than poetic metaphor. I prefer the platonic notion of the archetypes (forms that are timeless but whose appearance can batter time) especially as presented by Plato's nephew Speussippus (c. 407- 339 B.C.) who assumed leadership of the academy at the death of his uncle in 387 B.C. It was Speussippus who believed the forms were numbers in the Pythagorean sense. As an example he stated that the one is a basic principle in which, in conjunction with divine reason, produces the good. Speussippus, who often accompanied his uncle on his travels to other lands, felt the visual elegance of Arabic numerals, he saw in the Hejaz and the Nejd, was the best mode of representing the forms. What I have done is establish a system of presenting my dreams based on Tantric, Jungian, and Speussippusian concepts (my system is very similar to the one developed by Edmund Husseral [1859- 1938] in his book The Philosophy of Arithmetic [1891] in which we came to understand numbers in terms of the essences of the numbering concepts which consciousness has produced). The space division of the dream- space yields 70 parts: "The Wheel of Fortune" based Neptunian principles: 1) A total square is divided into 9 squares; 2) Two circles are established: inside the large square (the periphery) and inside the smaller central square (the center); 3) Quadripartites of diagonals and a cross are drawn; 4) A special way of drawing the first 9 integers based on Speussippus' system of utilizing 90° and 45° angles; 5) Different size circles (the symbol of wholeness in diversity) are drawn inside the 70 divided spaces. The relative diameters determine the relative importance of one scene of the dream over another; 6) The dream (any dream) can be divided into 54 scenes (Mercury- communication 5 and Uranus- the Hidden 4), including 16 blank out periods (the shattered citadel- a warning to avoid a strange fatality); 7) There is a linear sequence of scenes from a discovered beginning to a discovered ending. But the scenes fold back upon themselves giving the appearance of a random sequence. The central square of the dream space seems to be the point of entry into the dream sequence, and a dream, like all representations of a journey, is entered in medias res in the midst of things. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) I, Robur, Master of the World, 1968 Oil, Acrylic, Lettering on Canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: Redesigning Part of the Solar System Symbol Evocation: The Natural Link between the Earth and the Moon Comments: As we approach the Twenty-First Century, problems of managing the world seem to be emerging faster than we are able to solve them. Driven close to despair and distraction, architects and designers of the environment in general have become either bricoleurs, frantically trying to patch our reality as it comes apart at the seams, or prophets of doom traumatized by their own foreboding. As in all problem solving, the solution lies first in determining the next highest context of the elements involved, and second in assessing the new possibilities that then appear. In the case of the earth, the next design context is the solar system, specifically our nearest neighbor both physically and mythologically-- the moon. Therefore, I propose an earth-moon link-up through open space to form a simple, but gigantic motor. It would consist of double-layered geodesic spheres that rotate one within the other about ten miles off the surface of the earth and the moon. These friction machines could be constructed of a transparent living plastic and would be linked through space by a tube of the same material. The choice of a living material would mean that repairs would be self-generated and instantaneous. The orbit of the moon would drive the motor and provide all the energy ever needed. The sphere itself could support an atomic train, able to stop at any point above the earth's surface and lower shipments; thus the time needed to distribute goods and services would be minimized. Filtering systems could be installed in the sphere to both clean the air and reclaim lost minerals, or even to add nutrients to the atmosphere. Next all vegetation around the world would be united into one giant plant, made to grow through the link tube and finally around the moon so that a natural human-sustaining atmosphere would develop there. All buildings and instrumentality would be physically alive. Violent or explosive actions and effects, like atomic energy, would be time delayed and slowed to the rate of human observation. Finally would come the building of a flying saucer city- a new acropolis, the Urban Fossickated Octave. It would be a physically transformative environment circulating the earth and would take those on board those who wished to transit from the exoteric realm of knowledge to the mesoteric and through to the esoteric realm. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Alice Pleasance Liddell, 1968 Oil, Acrylic, Ink on Canvas 73 1/2 x 49 1/2 in. Subject: The Real Alice Symbol Evocation: The Awakening of Sexuality Comments: In 1863 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), an Oxford Don, made a photograph of Alice Pleasance Liddell (the source of the main image of this painting). Right after that he approached her father Mr. Liddell (then Dean of Oxford) for the hand of Alice (the oldest of Liddell's three daughters) in marriage. Charles was 31 and Alice was 11. The outraged Dean dismissed Dodgson's proposal in typical Victorian, melodramatic style: "Never darken my door again. You are forbidden to see Alice ever. You are the son of an archdeacon!" Of course, in the insular world of English 19th century "ivory- towerhood," nothing of the sort happened. Dodgson "retired" to his study at Christ Church, Oxford to then assume the mantle of his alter ego- Lewis Carroll- to write and publish his collected "love poems," which he had told as stories on various outings to his young friend with the title Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The year was 1865. By 1872 when Alice was 20 years old (and had been safely married off to someone named Hargreaves, undoubtedly orchestrated by Dean Liddell) Dodgson, again as Carroll, published the dark and labyrinthine sequel to Wonderland entitled Through the Looking Glass. This was also the year he took the last photograph of Alice he ever would. Again Alice is seated in a chair, but this time she was not posed sideways on a functional upright-- ready to move in the future. Instead Alice is shown laid-back and crest fallen in a velvet covered "overstuffed". She appears to be contemplating the sad fact that at 20 the best part of her life is now over. The two photographs side by side form the classic "before and after" shots. I chose to be concerned with the "before" pose-- the real Alice. Pedophilia (a sexual perversion in which children are preferred sexual objects to adults), which today on the absolute evil scale is considered up there with the Holocaust of World War II, as unforgivable sins, is often of what Dodgson is accused. Some of his biographers point to his numerous "little girl friends" as an indication of his pathology. But there is no evidence that he ever consummated any of his desires. The fact that Dodgson (an extremely shy person who had a stuttering problem) actually asked permission to legally marry Alice, and the fact that he was allowed to continue to write letters to her and the other little girls he knew even when they became married women, I feel proves otherwise. Dodgson was not like some others of his time who were on the edge sexually such as: 1) Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883), the translator of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám-- a closet homosexual; or 2) Frederick Rolfe (1860-1913, alias Baron Corvo), best known as the author of Hadrian the Seventh, who as a Catholic convert at seven years old lived a lonely, arrogant, peckish existence as a pauper-genius while denying sex itself; or 3) Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), the ill-fated but ever flamboyant playwright and toast of the Old and New World, who was imprisoned for homosexual offenses and died in exile in Paris, having to use the pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth for survival purposes for himself and his alienated wife and family; or 4) the great American writer of that era Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) who married his cousin Virginia when he was 27 and she was 13. The person that Dodgson was most like, however, was Edward Lear (1812-1888), the eccentric inventor of nonsense poetry and illustration for children. In fact, Lear's work was the major influence on the writing of Dodgson. They shared many of the same friends even through Lear was 20 years the elder. They also shared something else--they were both asexual as adults (brought on by childhood trauma). In other words they were both sexual and emotional neurasthenics. This was no problem to Edward Lear, who as the youngest of 21 children had early on in his life retreated into an infantilized state that had allowed him to blend in perfectly with the Victorian sexual repression of the day. The situation was somewhat different, however, for Dodgson. He was placed by his position as an Oxford Don in the continuous presence of healthy young people who were successfully completing their sexual maturity. The painful contrast of these others with himself drove him into a kind of voyeurism- not of explicit sexual acts- but of the emotional states of preadolescents on the verge of initiation into the full glories of a Cosmic Eros (which others, other than Dodgon, would call authentic adult love). He was emotionally stuck as a result of his father's repression and invalidation at this preadolescent stage. Being heterosexual Dodgson turned to young girls for help in his psychological dilemma--especially Alice to whom he was attracted. Of course, this was his sin. He took advantage of Alice's vulnerability to the "crush"--that is a young girl's infatuation with prominent men (the "Prince Charmings") of their immediate acquaintance impelled by an as yet unresolved "Electra Complex" concerning the love of their father. In an attempt to solve his own emotional problems, Dodgson produced some of the world's immortal literature, but at the same time he ruined the love life of Alice. However, in the end one might say in his defense that he really did love Alice, as he became "la grande passion" of her life. Well, as much as any "young boy of ten" could love "an older woman" of eleven. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Hollow Earth, 1968 Oil, Acrylic, Ink and Lettering on Canvas 53 1/2 x 53 1/2 inches Collection of the Austin Museum of Art, Texas Comments: The Theory of the Hollow Earth has three variations: 1) The first hollow earth appears as it does in conventional geology with one exception. Its form is topologically equivalent to a tube or a torus. There is an outer surface which is inhabited as we have come to know it. But there is also an interior cavity that is inhabited with its own source of illumination and other life support systems. Entry into the interior is gained by openings at the poles of 1400 miles in diameter. That the interior of the earth is supposed to contain its own lands, mountains, cities, oceans and lakes has been the source of many legends from: Agharta the subterranean land with its capital city Shamballah, to the first section of The Divine Comedy- L'Inferno- of Dante Alighieri, to the ancient Grecian underworld, to the underground utopia of the Vril-Ya depicted by Sir Bulwer Lytton in 1871 in his book Vril: The Power of the Coming Race. 2) The second hollow earth consists only of an interior inhabitable surface a number of miles thick that does not move. The entire remaining universe is a phantom rotating sphere with an absolute vacuum at its center which coincides with the centroid of the earth space. Beyond the extension of the hollow earth there is nothing. No space, no time, no energy, no other celestial bodies. 3) The third hollow earth is composed of an infinite universe of solid rock that is occasionally interrupted by voids, like a mixture of air entrained concrete. One of the voids is the hollow earth. But there is no physical movement in the universe, only mental movement. No person moves, they only believe that they move. This applies also to the apparent moment of the "celestial" bodies of the infinite phantom universe. It is often said that those who believe in some form of the hollow earth theory have a problem with accepting science in general and especially contemporary cosmology that has defined the earth and the human race out of its traditional central position and therefore value in the universe. And psychologically to be inside the earth is seen as a need to return to the safety of the "womb" of Mother Earth away from a frightening and indifferent universe. And yet such beliefs may in reality be symptoms of humanity's collective imagination ability to assert once again, in the evolution of culture, its freedom of expression against orthodoxy, in this case scientism, which promotes an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of the natural sciences when applied to all areas of knowledge. In that regard it is the third hollow earth that I have chosen to depict because it is based on a proposition that cannot be tested by science (such as is the case of the proposition of the existence of God), and, therefore the third hollow earth is linguistically mappable only by paradox- the language of the future. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Omega Point, 1970 Oil, Acrylic, and Lettering on Canvas 68 1/2 x 68 1/2 in. Subject: The process of evolution, which directs the force of consciousness to a state of super-maturity Symbol Evocation: The Universal Center of Unification Comments: Scientism means from our perspective at the beginning of the 21st century, an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science, especially physics, and the willingness to apply these methods to the other areas of knowledge, like the humanities. Historicism is the doctrine that the passing of the facts of history is the sole standard by which human events are to be valued. To be part of history—not as an abstraction but as a concrete certainty—is superior to being considered either morally good or evil. By this doctrine the individual who lived only once enjoyed the glory of entering history or lived and died a failure. While scientism and historicism often worked hand in hand, they just as often blocked each other’s efforts producing a world population bent on becoming a totally objective and totally isolated set of individuals afraid of any kind of unification. As Teilhard de Chardin put it, the fatal mistake of egoism “… is to confuse individuality with personality.” But his description of true unity is of utopic space: “Whatever the domain—whether it be the cells of the body, the members of society, or the elements of a spiritual synthesis—‘union differentiates’.” In every organized whole the parts perfect and fulfill themselves. By failing to grasp this universal law of union, so many kinds of pantheism have led us astray in the worship of a great whole in which individuals were supposed to become lost like a drop of water, dissolved like a grain of salt in the sea. If we apply it to the sum total of consciousnesses, the law of union frees us from the dangerous and ever-recurring illusion. In confluence along the line of their centers, the grains of consciousness do not tend to lose their contours and blend together. On the contrary, they accentuate the depths and incommunicability of their ego. The more together, they become the other, the more they become “themselves.” How could it be otherwise, since they plunge into Omega? Can a center dissolve? Or rather is not its own way of dissolving precisely to supercenter itself? In this way, under the combined influence of two factors, the fundamental immiscibility of consciousness and natural mechanism of every unification, the only form in which we are able to correctly express the final state of the world on the path of psychic concentration is in a system whose unity coincides with a paroxysm of harmonized complexity. Thus it would be false to represent Omega merely as a center born of the fusion of the elements it gathers together or nullifies in itself. By its structure, Omega in it ultimate principle can only be a distinct center radiating at a core of a system of centers. Currently the theoretical physicist Frank J. Tipler (1947- ), who co-wrote The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) with John D. Barrow—a book of physics theory based on the Omega Point, has now written his own book on the Omega Point called The Physics of Immortality (1994). Tipler starts by saying: “When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straight forward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.” What Tipler goes to argue is that the transition from the noosphere to the Omega Point can be represented physically by our material universe inversing the “Big-Bang” (the first singularity) by contracting to the Big Crunch (the final singularity). As we approach Omega all intelligent life forms that ever existed will be recreated as virtual reality computer programs run faster than light speed. As a result we will have an effective eternity of existence (or aevum: the Latin for never ending time) in which all people will be resurrected before the universe ends in the Crunch-Omega. picture not available Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Visionary Point, 1970 Oil and acrylic paint, ink, and letraset on canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: The connection between that which has no history and that which has only history Symbol Evocation: The Instant of Revelation Comments: Plato (428-346 BCE) in The Timaeus (359 BCE) describes the three elements that compose the universe. These elements suddenly appeared out of nowhere as a result of the titanic clash between the two most cosmic principles: reason (nous) and necessity (ananke). Reason as causal predictability attempts to overrule necessity by persuasion. Necessity as brute fact attempts to resist reason by the unpredictability of its “wandering” or errant cause. The nature of the collision is somewhat similar to the thought experiment of Romantic 19th century physics, which only hints at what happens when the “irresistible force” finally meets the “immovable object.” While this cosmology purports to explore fully the implications of the initial explosion, there immediately arise rejoinders on the part of the interlocutor, Timaeus of Logri. Timaeus recognizes the sublime terror one experiences approaching the very heart of revelation. The Triune that emerges is first: the realm of the unchanging forms, it is the domain of the uncreated, the indestructible, the unmodifiable, the uncombinable, the imperceptible to the physical senses and is known only by thought-- in essence, that which has no history. Second, the realm of the copy or that which bears the same name as the form, but detected by the physical senses, comes into existence and vanishes from a particular place and time, and during its existence is in constant motion. This realm is apprehended by opinion aided by sense data—in essence, it is that which has only history. Third, the nurse of becoming, the receptacle, or space which is eternal and indestructible and provides a position for everything that comes to be, but unlike time which is ranked among the works of the intellect and has a form or archetype (eternal duration or aevum), space has no archetype and exists in its own right as does the realm of form. There are, however, two direct portals to revelation in the exposition of Timaeus: First, the nature of the relationship of being with becoming or the forms and their copies. It is spoken of as follows: “and the things which pass in and out of it (space) are copies of the eternal realities whose form they take in a wonderful way. That is hard to describe—we will follow this up some other time.” Timaeus never does! Second, the way in which we as humans know about space “which is apprehended without the senses by a sort of spurious reasoning and so is hard to believe in. We look at it indeed in a kind of dream and say that everything that exists must be somewhere and occupy some space, and that what is nowhere in heaven or earth is nothing at all. And because of this dream state we are not awake to the distinctions we have drawn and others akin to them and fail to state the truth about the true and unsleeping reality.” Timaeus is not indulging in metaphor. The dream state being referred to is the lucid dream brought to such a primordial and tupiodal (manifesting) state that we are placed in a position to witness universal creation and destruction directly. In the 18th century the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) took Plato’s ideas of time and space and placed them on the same footing or ontic status. To the raw data of sensation, Kant held that we contribute the forms of space and time. Space is the form of the external sense, and time is the form of the internal sense. We never experience anything, said Kant, except that it is in space and time; and yet we never experience either space or time. Space and time in which we order phenomena, therefore, must come not from sensation but from ourselves. We are literal co-creators of the universe utilizing this capacity for revelation. I suspect that lucid dreaming or its variations is involved in how the copies are made from the platonic forms, thus explaining how becoming unites with being. The Visionary Point, therefore, is that moment in time when a viable time-machine begins to operate and has the capacity to access the entire past and future of human history from that fatal present. It is an instant of time that can be described as the meeting of time moving forward and time moving backward, and it becomes the point in time, which exactly precedes the beginning moment of the mystical experience of the entire earth. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Alchemy, 1973 Oil, acrylic, ink, lettering on canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: The Alchemical Process Symbol Evocation: Traditional Western Magic Comments: During the Middle Ages the magical practices of ancient, Egypt, Greece, and Rome became codifies as alchemy (the power and techniques of universal transformation) with the study of the Qabalah as its energy source. This is a perfect analogy of the way Christianity became the creative extension of Judaism. However, alchemy, then at its mature power was considered just another Gnostic heresy, and the personal practice of it as an example of blasphemy. The distinction between magic and religion that was accepted by the Medieval world was neatly summed up in 1920 by the synoptic chronicler of the occult, Lewis Spense, when he wrote: "It has been that religion consists of an appeal to the gods, whereas magic is the attempt to force their compliance." This is why alchemy is often called the confused precursor of the modern sciences of chemistry and physics-- which it is not. Science appeals to the myth of invariance in nature (the "laws" of nature) in order to euphemize out of existence the gradual hubris as a result of attempting a complete control of nature (never the intent of alchemy). In a certain sense both chemistry and physics could be viewed as failed forms of alchemy. When Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519) separated alchemy into what we now call art and science, he not only began the Italian Renaissance and the modern world, but he also discovered a way to keep the enterprise of magic alive right under the nose of the church. The price that was paid by the rest of humanity was: 1) traditional magic had to go underground into secret organizations that became the world of the occult-- the hidden, and 2) over the next 500 years there occurred a very unhealthy separation between the intellect and the passions at the societal level. The operating nomenclature of alchemy as it applies to the major substances of transformation are: A) the Body, B) the Soul, and C) the Spirit, which were rendered as mass, consciousness and energy during the International Gothic Period and into the Renaissance. The Church considered the Body, the Soul, and the Spirit to be its exclusive property; and its obvious attempt at the theological neutering of these sacred concepts into the secular forms, simultaneously accomplished two tasks: 1) it gave science, a new and fast rising bureaucracy of learning and authority something of its own to chew on besides the Church's authority, and 2) allowed the Church the leverage to quietly push alchemy off the stage of knowledge and into oblivion-- or at lest that is what it though that it did. The final paroxysm of tension between thinking and feeling, which spiked at the end of the 19th Century, was eloquently recorded by the philosopher/historian Sigried Giedion, in Space, Time, and Architecture: Growth of a New Tradition (1941-1967). Ostensibly a polemic for modernism in architecture, it became for me, one of the major influences in the current revival of alchemy, because it documents the transforming power of a willful and impassioned vision for a present and future world. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Subject: The dynamics of the intentional community Symbol Evocation: Heaven on earth Comments: When the German Existential Lutheran Theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965) wrote, in 1951, an essay entitled Critique and Justification of Utopia, his conclusion was: "utopia: the suspension between the possible and the impossible." The 1950s was not a very sympathetic era toward utopian thought. It was a time coming down off the negativity toward utopia expressed by Aldous Huxley and George Orwell in the 1930s and 40s. By the 1960s (a pro-utopia period) Tillich's apocalyptic non sequitur began to make sense. Because, utopia means one thing when you strip it of all scholarship and classical references to such notables as: Plato, Saint Thomas More (who coined the term "utopia" in 1516, Francis Bacon, Tommaso Campanella, Bulwer Lytton, Samuel Butler, Edward Bellamy, H.G. Wells and all the rest. Utopia amounts to one simple concept: Heaven on Earth. Well, how can you have that? Isn't heaven supposed to be an "afterlife" experience-- if it exists at all? Was Northrop Frye right when he claimed the idea of utopia was worth the ink and paper the word was written on? Well I for one believe it does exist, meaning it has existed and can exist again because its ontological status is a special modality of mysticism-- a social mode. Consider the symbol of structure of utopia: The breathing in of the universe: When the one falls instantly and without effort into the many. This is the female aspect of the manifestation-- the breathing out, the great release. But when the many attempt the long and arduous struggle to come back to the one, this becomes the male aspect of the manifestation of the universe-- the breathing in-- the path to utopia or the alchemical task to resolve aspects of consciousness as a manifestation of the collective will with aspects of consciousness as a manifestation of one's immiscible self. The path to utopia is expressed as a non-oppressive environment free from all systems whether they are hierarchies, holiarchies or heteroarchies. The form is the major fractal of the manifest universe-- the logarithmic spiral of equilangular spiral that makes an infinite number of revolutions around the one, becoming closer to it-- the source of all without ever violating the one from the power of the ego. The goal of this mystical topology is the utopic-- the space of the utopia. It is the space of nature, which when fully revealed to human consciousness demonstrates the unity of concepts which are apparently separated by the becomingness of history, such as: the abstract/ the real, the objective/ the subjective, death/ life, mass/ consciousness, the profane/ the sacred, matter/ spirit, body/ soul. Utopic space is the action of bringing together the dream of reason-- the freedom of the will as pure being (transcendence) with the temporal ecstasy of the imagination-- the control of the will as pure becoming (morality). Since the path to true utopia is a fractal vector, it is the control of four other vectors that would if released veer toward spaces other than utopic space. Utopian or utopic space exists as a dimensional portal between the 4th and 5th dimensional realms. It is literally a symbolic space and is therefore an a-dimensional and not non-dimensional space. To be a-dimensional means that it is a space that transcends the natures of the dimensioned spaces that bound it, and it subsumes the natures of the boundary spaces. If utopic space loses the tension of its quadruple nature, it will simply collapse into a space of boundaries, depending of course, upon which of the spaces suddenly becomes dominant. The boundary-- non-utopic-- spaces are: 1. Eutopia: A life lived in relation to the mystical experience and which abdicates the common good and all social connections and responsibilities. In this space the ego believes that it has become God. The vector is directly into the source of all. 2. Kakatopia (or Dystopia): Lives are lived in the knowledge of their mutual alienation ("we are all alone together"), in mutually repellent spaces-- this is the literal bad place. The vector continues the initial explosion of the one into the many which in now unnecessary. 3. Kenotopia: Lives lived in a space of comfort and ignorance without stress, striving or goals. It is the kitsch place. The vector is a circle, which is established at fixed distances from the source of all, depending when the life left the true path to utopia, and can therefore account for differences and levels of taste even in the realm of kitsch. 4. Oligotopia: A group of lives develops a system by which they can leave the path to utopia and enter kenotopia, which because of the system becomes the bureaucratic place. The vector is a line away from the source of all which is stopped by a pre-existing kenotopic space. The fractal spiral of nature is evolution if the human consciousness was not present. To become one with nature means to be on the path to utopia. To be in or live in utopic space has a metaphor which I have always liked-- that is the Wheatstone Bridge invented in 1872 by Sir Charles Wheatstone. It is a device for measuring electrical resistances and consists of a powered conductor joining two branches of a circuit and a galvanometer. The electromotive force introduced into the circuit is totally balanced by electrical resistors. Both the power and the resistance can increase in a balanced potential. An ideal Wheatstone Bridge, which possesses an infinite resistance to an infinite electrical power supply, would produce an undetectable rising tension unless entry into the system was gained. This system of utopic space has always seemed to me to be the most vivid, because it represents the attempt to engineer the meeting of the immovable object with the irresistible force, and this process is observable only from within the system. Like utopia itself, it seems not to exist unless you are actually in it. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Temporality: The Great Within of the Universe, 1974 Oil, Acrylic, Ink, Lettering on Canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: The Nature of Temporality Symbol Evocation: The Geometry of Change Comments: Most of the geometries (earth measures) that attempt to model the reaction of human consciousness to nature only deal effectively with spatiality. No aspect of temporality was ever properly described by a geometry until the mid-Nineteenth Century, and we are only now beginning to be able to more fully express the nature of temporality by geometry. Before the Nineteenth Century, the line or the circle was used to depict Time, both in the West and East. Eternity was essentially left a geometric blank, and any dimensions of temporality below Time were simply not considered. Occasionally someone might have used a spiral to attempt to join the intuitions of the line and the circle, but overall the rigidity of these spatially-based forms of geometry have always found temporality--in essence, the concept of change--too elusive, even for calculus. By 1850, a new branch of mathematics had surfaced known as topology, concerned with those properties of geometric configuration (point sets) that are unaltered by elastic deformations (such as stretching or twisting); points are homeomorphic, remaining the same regardless of changes in configuration. Since points were all that remained of classical geometry in topology, temporality finally had its geometry. A point is unperceivable and inconceivable, thus it can represent an instant of time. I have used topology's most complex form named after its inventor, the mathematician Felix Klein (1849-1925). A Klein bottle is a seven-sided convex topological surface that appears to enclose space but in reality has no inside or outside. Since it does not model space in the conventional sense, I have found that it can map temporal notions of change like Goethe's Zeitgeist (time spirit), the Kairos (the teleology of the moment of crisis) and other aspects of temporality which I am continuing to research. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Utopia: Time Cast as a Voyage, 1974 Oil, Acrylic and Lettering Canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: The dynamics of the intentional community Symbol Evocation: Heaven on earth Comments: When the German Existential Lutheran Theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965) wrote, in 1951, an essay entitled Critique and Justification of Utopia, his conclusion was: "utopia: the suspension between the possible and the impossible." The 1950s was not a very sympathetic era toward utopian thought. It was a time coming down off the negativity toward utopia expressed by Aldous Huxley and George Orwell in the 1930s and 40s. By the 1960s (a pro-utopia period) Tillich's apocalyptic non sequitur began to make sense. Because, utopia means one thing when you strip it of all scholarship and classical references to such notables as: Plato, Saint Thomas More (who coined the term "utopia" in 1516, Francis Bacon, Tommaso Campanella, Bulwer Lytton, Samuel Butler, Edward Bellamy, H.G. Wells and all the rest. Utopia amounts to one simple concept: Heaven on Earth. Well, how can you have that? Isn't heaven supposed to be an "afterlife" experience-- if it exists at all? Was Northrop Frye right when he claimed the idea of utopia was worth the ink and paper the word was written on? Well I for one believe it does exist, meaning it has existed and can exist again because its ontological status is a special modality of mysticism-- a social mode. Consider the symbol or structure of utopia: The breathing in of the universe: When the one falls instantly and without effort into the many. This is the female aspect of the manifestation-- the breathing out, the great release. But when the many attempt the long and arduous struggle to come back to the one, this becomes the male aspect of the manifestation of the universe-- the breathing in-- the path to utopia or the alchemical task to resolve aspects of consciousness as a manifestation of the collective will with aspects of consciousness as a manifestation of one's immiscible self. The path to utopia is expressed as a non-oppressive environment free from all systems whether they are hierarchies, holiarchies or heteroarchies. The form is the major fractal of the manifest universe-- the logarithmic spiral of equilangular spiral that makes an infinite number of revolutions around the one, becoming closer to it-- the source of all without ever violating the one from the power of the ego. The goal of this mystical topology is the utopic-- the space of the utopia. It is the space of nature, which when fully revealed to human consciousness demonstrates the unity of concepts which are apparently separated by the becomingness of history, such as: the abstract/ the real, the objective/ the subjective, death/ life, mass/ consciousness, the profane/ the sacred, matter/ spirit, body/ soul. Utopic space is the action of bringing together the dream of reason-- the freedom of the will as pure being (transcendence) with the temporal ecstasy of the imagination-- the control of the will as pure becoming (morality). Since the path to true utopia is a fractal vector, it is the control of four other vectors that would if released veer toward spaces other than utopic space. Utopian or utopic space exists as a dimensional portal between the 4th and 5th dimensional realms. It is literally a symbolic space and is therefore an a-dimensional and not non-dimensional space. To be a-dimensional means that it is a space that transcends the natures of the dimensioned spaces that bound it, and it subsumes the natures of the boundary spaces. If utopic space loses the tension of its quadruple nature, it will simply collapse into a space of boundaries, depending of course, upon which of the spaces suddenly becomes dominant. The boundary-- non-utopic-- spaces are: 1. Eutopia: A life lived in relation to the mystical experience and which abdicates the common good and all social connections and responsibilities. In this space the ego believes that it has become God. The vector is directly into the source of all. 2. Kakatopia (or Dystopia): Lives are lived in the knowledge of their mutual alienation ("we are all alone together"), in mutually repellent spaces-- this is the literal bad place. The vector continues the initial explosion of the one into the many which in now unnecessary. 3. Kenotopia: Lives lived in a space of comfort and ignorance without stress, striving or goals. It is the kitsch place. The vector is a circle, which is established at fixed distances from the source of all, depending when the life left the true path to utopia, and can therefore account for differences and levels of taste even in the realm of kitsch. 4. Oligotopia: A group of lives develops a system by which they can leave the path to utopia and enter kenotopia, which because of the system becomes the bureaucratic place. The vector is a line away from the source of all which is stopped by a pre-existing kenotopic space. The fractal spiral of nature is evolution if the human consciousness was not present. To become one with nature means to be on the path to utopia. To be in or live in utopic space has a metaphor which I have always liked-- that is the Wheatstone Bridge invented in 1872 by Sir Charles Wheatstone. It is a device for measuring electrical resistances and consists of a powered conductor joining two branches of a circuit and a galvanometer. The electromotive force introduced into the circuit is totally balanced by electrical resistors. Both the power and the resistance can increase in a balanced potential. An ideal Wheatstone Bridge, which possesses an infinite resistance to an infinite electrical power supply, would produce an undetectable rising tension unless entry into the system was gained. This system of utopic space has always seemed to me to be the most vivid, because it represents the attempt to engineer the meeting of the immovable object with the irresistible force, and this process is observable only from within the system. Like utopia itself, it seems not to exist unless you are actually in it. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Divine Comedy, 1972-75 Oil, and Acrylic on Canvas Triptych Overall: 73 1/2 x 220 1/2 in. Subject: Medieval Cosmos of The Divine Comedy Symbol Evocation: The Symbol of the Sacramental Earth Comments: So far the classical forms of illustrating the poem of Dante have been confined to the media of painting, drawing, print making, and some sculpture, such as that of Auguste Rodin. Even one of Dante's contemporaries, the painter Giotto, who began the tradition of illustrating the poem, appears to have considered it entirely a painter's task. Since Giotto's time approximately 30 artists have attempted the illustration. Some notables include Botticelli, Vasari, D.G. Rossetti, William Blake, Ingres, Delacroix, Gustave Dore and more recently Robert Rauschenberg, and Joseph Cornell. In preparing for my illustration, I researched what has now become almost a codified tradition in the visionary genre. From this tradition two basic approaches emerged. First, no one by choice or circumstance actually finished illustrating the entire Divine Comedy. Both Botticelli and Blake, who intended to finish, started to work on it late in life and died before they could complete the task. Flaxman and Dore, who are often represented as having finished the whole poem, left out certain Cantos from illustration especially in The Paradiso. Many other artists often concentrated their efforts on selected Cantos only. Second, the iconography of the solutions have been either anecdotes abstracted from individual Cantos as examples of narrative art, or visual descriptions of the architectural structure of the three Cantica, singly or totally. In my own work I decided to combine both approaches in a triptych consisting of three, six-foot square panels based on a mandallic-like structure. I show a cross-section of the conical pit of The Inferno (L'Inferno), an elevation of the Mount of Purgatory (Il Purgatorio), and a cross-section through the entire medieval cosmos (Il Paradiso), including the Celestial Rose. Surrounding each major image, in a circular series of panels (like a filmstrip), I tried by means of words, diagrams and anecdotal pictures to illustrate the entire contents of each one of the 100 Cantos of the poem. What I feel I have accomplished, to the best of my ability, is the completion of the two major iconographical thrusts of the ad hoc tradition. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Get Thee Behind Me, Satan, 1974 Pen and Letraset on Rag Board Screenprint in an edition of 100 produced in 1983 20 3/4 x 20 3/4 in. Signed and numbered by the artist Comments: In the Book of Saint Matthew, chapter 16, verses 13 to 20, Jesus was with his disciples in the district of Caesarea Philippi, forty kilometers above the Sea of Galilee. Simon Peter confesses his faith in Jesus as the Messiah saying, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” As a reward, Jesus holds Peter above the others with, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” In verses 21 to 23 Jesus foretells his numerous trials and his ultimate triumph: at the Last Supper in the Essene Quarter of Jerusalem, the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane near the Golden Gate of the east side of the temple of Jerusalem, the crucifixion and burial on Golgotha on the west side, and his rising from the dead on the third day. At this Peter took Jesus aside and said, “Far be it from thee, O Lord; this will never happen to thee.” This is like someone saying, “If you really know the place where you are going to be in trouble, the wise person does not go there.” To this Jesus wheels around and says to Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art a scandal to me; for thou dost not mind the things of God, but those of men.” I always thought this passage in the New Testament to be a bit bizarre. Jesus, in an almost mechanical manner, declares not only Peter to be “Satan,” the Hebrew word for “adversary,” but also commands him to place himself behind Jesus. If to “get behind someone” was a slang term of the day meaning “to go away,” it might make some sense. But remember religions like political parties are rarely involved in slang and humor at their beginnings. Nevertheless, they often utilize neologisms: new words or expressions sometimes coined by psychotics. My belief is that it is not so in this case. Jesus really meant what he said. To place one’s enemy behind oneself is the most dangerous of acts, but not for someone who is beyond the realm of flesh and in the realm of the Spirit. The Divine World is the inverse of the mundane. In order to illustrate this mystical paradox, I needed an abstract image of the face of God, and the face of Satan, just to keep the visual result symbolic of the transcendent. For the face of God I chose the image provided by the Christian Gothic poet Dante Alighieri, who was born in Florence in 1265 and died in Ravenna in 1321. In his poem popularly know as “The Divine Comedy” (originally known simply as a “Comedy”), in the third section, “Il Paradiso,” in canto 33 (the entire poem contains 100 cantos), Dante faces “the Beatific vision” and learns how substance, accident, and mode were fused in such a way that what I now describe is but a glimmer of that light. Further on he describes the living light: “Within its depthless clarity of substance, I saw the great light shine into three circles in three clear colors bound in one same space; the first seemed to reflect the next like rainbow on rainbow, and the third was like a flame equally breathed forth by the other two.” And in one globe appeared the face of a man. The image of Satan (representing the force of the Dark) reflects that he has no form of his own and must steal form from the Light, although with distortion. Constantine I (the Roman Emperor who ruled in the West from 312 to 337 A. D.) allowed Christianity a basic legal status as another Roman religion. His mother was a Christian before it was legal, and Constantine himself became a deathbed catechumen to Christianity. During the three hundred years or so prior to the legalization of Christianity, members of the cult identified themselves to each other by wearing the symbol of the Vesica Pisces (or bladder fish) as costume jewelry. The Roman guards caught on to this ploy very quickly. What the Christians did next was rather interesting. In Rome at that time there remained the cult of Hygeia, the Greek Goddess of Health. Her symbol was the upright pentagram with one point up worn as a neck pendant. The five-pointed star represented the five physical senses that contained and controlled the principal of death, the irrational fraction of the PHI proportion. This was also worn by the remains of the Pythagorean Brotherhood. But the Christians soon discovered that the pentagram worn upside down with the two points up looks very similar to the one-point-up star. They next identified the point-up star with the Triumphant Christ and the point-down with Christ Crucified. Since Saint Peter requested to be crucified upside down to partially make up for his betrayals of Jesus, I thought the image of the point-down star for the image of Satan is appropriate for two reasons: First, Constantine used both the right-side-up and upside-down stars on his shield to represent the triumph of good and the defeat of evil with his famous phrase “ In Hoc Signo Vinces” (By this standard you will conquer). Second, during the Middle Ages, Christians would chalk the upside down star on their doors, meaning Christ Crucified was within and the devil had better leave because Jesus already had their souls. By a cultural inertia the upside-down star eventually became the face of Satan. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Fire of Time, 1975 Acrylic, ink, and vinyl lettering on board 20 1/2 x 20 1/2 in. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Black White Hole, 1976 Oil, Acrylic and Lettering on Canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: Cosmology and a New World View Symbol Evocation: The Mystery of Natural Singularities in Nature Comments: The construction of a world-view or a meta-history (which exists at the fifth realm of manifestation from pure revelation) is dependent on the previous more encompassing context- the fourth- which is the realm of cosmology. I have selected, therefore, as the basis of my new world-view, the entity from contemporary cosmology, which has taken on the proportions of a true symbol- myth—the black hole. As an occasion of methodological unknowingness of the gothic vision of death, it partially satisfies the definition of a symbol as the portal to the full impact of a true mystery. Added to this is the theory that at some time in the process of its existence a black hole becomes its inverse-- the white hole. The universe, therefore, is seen as a kind of vacillation of entropy and syntropy (like breathing out and breathing in) a cycle in which the goal of history is seen as the actualization of all possibilities forwards and backwards in time constantly revealing new visions of nature. In the process of the universe, the black- white hole implies a three part cycle of meta- history: 1) A simple sacred tribalism- motivated by mysticism (the black hole of the breathing in); followed by 2) A period of high civilization (first utopian in character and then bureaucratic in nature), (the holding of the breath at the naked singularity of the black hole); followed by 3) A period of rapid degeneration (a complex of secular nomadism and barbarism) motivated by a life flow in the physical senses (the release of the white hole as the breathing out). The cycle repeats as a form, which organizes the constantly changing particulars of that which has only history. Manley, Roger The End is Near!: Visions of Apocalypse, Millennium and Utopia Dilettante Press, Los Angeles. 1998 pp 74-9. Richmond, Lisa The End is Near! World Art: The Magazine of Contemporary Visual Arts issue 18, 1998 Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Renovatio Mundi, 1977 Oil, acrylic, lettering on canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: The Renewal of the World Symbol Evocation: The Inverse of the Garden of Eden (World Utopia) Comments: If a single influence could be identified for the Gothic poet Dante Aligheri, it would be the Cistercian mystic Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202 AD). His doctrines were especially popular among the "Spiritual" Franciscans, a conventicle of which Dante was a lay member. He appears in Il Paradiso, Canto 12: "And here beside me shines the Calabrian abbot Joachim whose soul was given the power of prophecy." His reward in the afterlife is in The Heaven of the Sun: the second circle of lights (i.e. the outer Augustian ring of stars. Joachim is big star number 12, his favorite number). The message of Joachim is the Sabbatum Fidelium (the final rest of the faithful in the renewed world). It is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit as world Utopia, where heaven and Earth are at last united. Considering the Bible as two dispensations as any Christian believer would, Joachim separated the entire Bible into three historical parts: the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Book of Revelation. Each part, although understood separately, are actually organically related to each other like Grecian ornamental frets-- growing one out of the other. Also each part represents a particular spiritual condition of the world-- from the beginning to the end of time: the Age of the Law, the Age of the Gospel, and finally the Age of the Spirit. He named exact dates of various cosmic events and named those responsible. The concepts of the historical "Rapture" and "Tribulation" are just two of his religious inventions. All present day evangelical Christians owe him an enormous debt. The descriptions he wrote of the New Jerusalem descending and hovering over the Dead Sea in Palestine are the literal beginning of modern science fiction. Father Pierre Teilhard deChardin (1881-1955) had less problems with the Papacy in terms of heresy than Joachim. Nevertheless, Dante composed the entire Divine Comedy on the basis of Joachim's Byzantine Mathematics. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Living Klein Bottle House of Time, 1978 Oil, Acrylic, Lettering on Canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: The Second Design Phase of the Time Machine Symbol Evocation: The Singularity between the Third and Fourth Dimensions Spatiality Comments: The basic change from the first to the second design phase of the time machine is the addition of the Biochron Time-Suit. This entity is an alternative creature that has been genetically programmed to grow in the form of a living Klein bottle. I believe that to perceive time periods radically dislocated from one's habitual and functional space-time frame, a buffer or early warning system is necessary for protection against possible changes in circumstance and belief. Although the average world-view should take one successfully through an entire lifetime with little adjustment, world-views or universe-views are in fact notoriously fragile entities. For example, if you attempt to process information on the circumstance and beliefs of the world 5,000 years hence, you might well be brought into direct contact with thoughts not only unimaginable but directly destructive to someone in your present, or yourself. Imagine if the artifacts of our present civilization were constructed by people from our ancient past, and what inevitable havoc would reign unless the ancients had had some way of understanding our present beliefs. Coupled with the Biochron Time-Suit is a device I call the Agnosticon. The purpose of the device is to allow its user to engineer their doubt or faith processes. In my opinion, it is necessary to engineer doubt and faith in relation to the accelerated space-time frames of reference that would be encountered with the time machine, in order to perceive these unfamiliar world-views. In other words, you must be able to believe or disbelieve any proposition instantly in order to survive in alien space-time systems. The basis of the Agnosticon is the heptahedron, which is a seven-sided convex polyhedron made from a piezoelectric crystal shaped like an octahedron and electromagnetically charged along its major axes and surfaces. As a structured singularity, the heptahedron is kept isolated from other singularities so that it can function specifically in relation to human beings. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Tesseract House, 1978 Ink and Letraset on Board 51 x 33 in. Subject: The Cosmic Mission of Architecture Symbol Evocation: The Tesseract as the Key to the Mystery of the Universe Comments: Because: On September 30, 1976 in Boston, I received the idea that makes the time machine a practical device- a new form of a gyroscope, “The Levogyre,” which weighs less while in operation that still- which models a photon or a black hole and makes possible the control and amplification of pre and retrocognition (pre-perception of the future and retroperception of the past), and, therefore, can access all of time without violating the localism of the intertial frame of reference, as does the device depicted in H.G. Wells’ novel The Time Machine(1895), which purports to alter the entire universe from a single location. Because: The Time Machine implies that all creature will meet eventually throughout the universe and genetically retrofit themselves into one species of being with one goal- the fulfillment of the Cosmic Task, which is to transform all of the absolute matter of physical universe into absolute spirit, starting from one instant before the Big Bang to whatever and whenever a motionless future is reached. Because: The Big Bang is God (He, She, It) expelling all deadness from the ultimate void, and since there is nothing but “the all,” we must work to bring aliveness to the matter of physical universe and prepare it to be delivered from our dimensional frame of Time Soluoid into the next higher dimensional realm of Eternity-Vosolid, and live with the fact that we have no way of knowing where we are going, but we do know that we have to go. Therefore: The only logical thing to do is establish a series of built environments around the world that provide a higher dimensional mood, thereby allowing any strange phenomena to be interpreted in relation to time mechanics, such as flying saucers, UFOs, implants, psychic phenomena, all as being, therefore, parts of the time machine. These environments, called Tesseract Houses (or fourth- dimensional houses), were invented by the American architect Claude Fayette Bragdon (1866- 1946), born in New London, New Hampshire. When his father moved to Rochester, New York, Claude helped him found The Genessee Lodge of the Theosophical Society, while sitting on a bench in Central Park, New York City. In 19367. the 71 year old met 30 year old Robert A. Heinlein (1907- 1988). Heinlein, a then budding writer, listened with fascination to the architect who claimed that the secret to the “mystery of the universe” was to be known through architecture and he (Bragdon) had the key. Four years later Heinlein wrote a story in the architect’s honor entitled And He Built a Crooked House. It was humorous in the intent but, alas, was not entirely in th spirit of what Bragdon wanted. I, therefore, have taken on the task of presenting The Tesseract House as it should be, i.e. as envisioned by the architect. It is a live-in architectural studio for a team of designers, seven people in all, three married couples and the team leader who is single. When children begin to appear they will become trained within the team. The team leader has private quarters at the ground level. The team will pursue such design problems as: 1. Physically alive architecture, both vegetative and mammalian, 2. Developing time machine variations in relation to the natural scale of inerial frames of references, 3. Mega and nano engineering such as the earth-moon link up, redesign of the solar system and eventually the entire universe, and the replacement of natural evolution by an understanding of authentic human intentionally under the guidance of pure spirit. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Metatron, 1979 Oil, Acrylic, Lettering on Canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: The Numinous Nature of Revelation Symbol Evocation: The interaction between Cosmos and Chaos Comments: Transformative symbols can be considered as having aspects that track the natural systems of revelation, and those aspects can be considered as messages from The Metatron to humans by means of methodological revelation. The Metatron is one of the most important angels in the Western Traditions of Angelology. He is the supreme Angel of Death to whom God gives orders as to which souls will be taken, and is the link between God and humanity. His name means “little yahweh” or “one who occupies the throne next to the divine throne”. According to the Kabalah, The Metatron is the angel who led the children of Israel through the wilderness after the Exodus, as the “vox mystica”. Although the name metatron originated within the history of Judaism, the two parts of the name are from ancient Greek which may indicate a gnostic influence: META:That which is beyond, more comprehensive of transcendent (a prefix) TRON: That which is a complete instrument (a suffix). Therefore, metatron means a transcendent instrument, i.e. an angel. There are three modalities to the revelation that humans receive: The Sacramental, the revelation of the body; The Mystical, the revelation of the spirit; and The Prophetic, the revelation of the soul. Each modality uses meta-energy-an eternal energy which is efficacious without motion that can interact with Kato-Energy, the energy of time that is efficacious with motion. The meeting of these two energies results in the extinction of the three phases of time: The extinction of the past, the extinction of the present, and the extinction of the future. The phases are replaced by the now of eternity. In each of the three modalities of revelation the now manifests as three distinct symbols: The sacramental symbols are those rituals which prepare for the now of the divine as nourishment; The mystical symbols are those cosmologies which prepare for the now of the divine as being made to face the ultimate unknown; and The prophetic symbols are those projections of good and evil which prepare for the now of the divine as the paradoxical tension between Free Will and Fate. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Cosmolux, 1981 Oil, acrylic and lettering on canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: The Natural Urbanism of the Universe Symbol Evocation: The Cosmic Conventicle Comments: It is said that throughout the history of humankind, both recorded and unrecorded, there has existed an Invisium Collegium (or an invisible college of people) who have formed a tradition outside of all other traditions. The members of the I.C. are intrusted with keeping the world from destroying itself and maintaining humanity in readiness for participation in the cosmic task. This college contains only 30 positions at any moment in history—no more, no less. If a member dies, a new candidate is chosen by a ritual that has never been witnessed by outsiders or the family of the candidate. The only time that a candidate knows of the I.C., and that they have been chosen, is when a dying member approaches them with a special gift to be placed in the candidate’s charge. If the gift is accepted the member can die in peace knowing that everything is again all right with the world and the future of human destiny is assured. All religious and occult groups have hinted at the existence of the Invisium Collegium, but it was the followers of the tradition of the Qabalah who gave it a more descriptive name: The Lamedh Vulvinik—the 30 who goad the ox of humanity through the proper cosmic portal to the next stage of the evolution of the entire physical universe, and who maintain the earth until that fatal moment. They are the practitioners, not of natural or religious revelation, but of methodological revelation—the exact counterpart to methodological sensation or science. Why this I so, is that in this way the information about the nature of the cosmic task remains undistorted own through history. Any particular member of the Invisium Collegium is not required to understand the nature of the cosmic task but only keep alive the transmission of information, by means of “the gift,” until such time as the people of earth have achieved a special nature of consciousness which will allow the earth’s part of the cosmic task to unfold. I have received certain hints, fragments, Freiheiten, which have given me a sense of the nature of the Invisium Collegium, the Cosmic Task, and the fact that the task is at hand. We are ready to move out into cosmic space from a planet, which for all intents and purposes exists in the very wild wood of the universe. The urban centers of the universe are in the most unimaginable places as far as we are concerned. What is coming through is: 1) The Lamedh Vulvinik is the decoding of the Gnostic mythos of the Conventicle, an assemble of those who possess knowledge that by its nature must necessarily violate the consensus of what constitutes reality. The Conventicle alone can serve as the instrument of apocalyptic synthesis. The goal of the Conventicle is not to transform the world, but to escape from it. 2) The cosmic task, in its totality, is the redesigning of the entire physical universe in order to allow it to enter a dimensional portal (or in my terms—to transit from the fourth to the fifth dimensional realm). 3) The golden section of proportion (x2-x-1=0= (1+ √5)/2) in all its manifestations is the key as to how to cause the transit. The golden section or Phi is the master fractal of manifest nature which allows for a perfect continuity of life and death. 4) The actual instrumentality of transit will be by light itself in both is additive and subtractive forms. What is referred to as the conscious and non-conscious aspects of the physical universe will be first transformed into light before transit. 5) I believe that UFOs have been monitoring the work of the Invisium Collegium and helping them to continue by means of forms that go beyond consciousness. The end result to humanity will be as a particular form of consciousness, as incomprehensible to a particular human being as the nature of the human being would be to one of the cells that go to make up that human. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Orgone Motor, 1981 Oil, Acrylic, Lettering on Canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: A Motor Powered by Meta-energy--An Unrealized Dream of Wilheim Reich Symbol Evocation: The Cosmic Egg Comments: In terms of its output, the motor is a simple reciprocating engine that produces kato-enery. However, its input energy is Meta-energy, or in Reich's terms, Orgone energy. Meta-energy is energy that is efficacious without motion, whereas Kato-energy is energy that is efficacious with motion. The energy cycle functions as follows: a) Orgone is collected. b) A special psychotronic generator converts the Orgone energy into an amplified form of psychokinesis in single timed pulses. c) The pulses are then discharged into the water box. The Oraccu, or Orgone collection boxes, act like condensers of Meta-energy from natural singularities that exist in all fluids. Any vortex in a medium utilizes the equiangular spiral and is therefore a Phi-ratio singularity. Air has the same vortex quality as fluids and in this case, it is from air that the Meta-energy is drawn. A liquid crystal focuses the collected orgone energy that then enters the longitudinal electromagnetic axis of a freshly fertilized turtle egg. As the blasto-disc descends toward the center of the yoke, the electromagnetic axis rotates ninety degrees transferring the Orgone energy to the ivory arms of the Orgonome. A single pulse is released from the Orgonome (an example of non-human psychokinesis) and discharged into the water box, which then undergoes simple translational motion back and forth within the frame of the motor. A control singularity, the tetrakis-hexahedron-heptahedron, holds the pulse of Orgone energy a fraction of a second before it is released into the water box to create a time-delay pattern so that the pulses of the two sides of Oroccu boxes are out of phase with each other. Thus, when one set of Oraccu boxes and their Orgonomes are producing psychokinesis, the other set is at rest and vice-versa. The controls are made of piezoelectric crystals that must be stared at for at least one hour daily while blinking at the rate of two blinks per second. This means that two people must blink out of phase with each other by a half-second at four control crystals at once to get them working properly. The crystals' effect as controls is further modified by rotating them. As a biotechnic machine, this design phase exhibits a relatively low order of work efficiency, which will be improved in later designs. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Astrakakiteraboat, 1983 Oil, Acrylic, lettering on Canvas 75 1/2 x 69 1/2 in. Subject: The Kite-Boat and Astral Projection Symbol Evocation: The Ship as the Symbol of Eternal Wandering Comments: Astral projection, or the journey of the Ka, was the major motif of classical Egypt; it was considered the natural link between life and death. Astral projection affected the daily lives of the Egyptians through religious ritual and the arts and architecture. The Sun was seen as the source of life, and was both the origin and final destination of the Soul. The ship was the symbol of the wandering Soul after death. The kite-boat is an attempt to practice the art of invention with a sensibility akin to that of the ancient Egyptians. What I tried to do was place myself within the mind of Imhotep, the architect of the step pyramid of King Zoser of the Third Dynasty. Imhotep was the first noted architect in Western history, remarkable also for his rare combination of powers as an organizer, statesman and master of all arts and crafts. He was called; Grand Vizier, Chief Judge, Overseer of the King's Records, Bearer of the Royal Seal, Chief of All Works of the King, Supervisor of That Which Heaven Brings, the Earth Creates, and the Nile Brings, Supervisor of Everyting in the Entire Land, The Chancellor of the King of Lower Egypt, Chief Under Hereditary Nobles, and the Helioplitan High Priest. Two millenniums after his death he was raised to the stature of a god of healing. I asked myself if such a person had not died, what would he be doing now. A clue came from the Nineteenth Century, when prompted by the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1789, ancient Egypt itself was rediscovered. The Nineteenth Century made two basic breakthroughs: the invention of electricity and advances in kite technology that led to the heavier-than-air flying machines of the Twentieth Century. It would have been natural for Imhotep to connect these two ideas in the kite-boat. By means of electricity he could have induced the wandering of the Soul during life (the Ka-Body) and symbolized the entire process by the kite. The kite is the Ka, the ropes are the Astral Cord, and the boat is the physical body held down but still wandering over the earth. With this invention Imhotep could have worshipped the sun directly from out on the ocean, connected life with death, and had the freedom of never having to stay in one place. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Color Breathing, 1983 Ink, Letraset, airbrush on rag board Silkscreen on Rag Paper Edition of 100 in 1983 23 x 23 in. (sheet); 20 x 20 in. (image) Signed and numbered by the artist Subject: A Color-Healing Device Symbol Evocation: The Mystery of Color Exhibited Architectonic Thought-Forms: A Survey of the Art of Paul Laffoley. Austin Museum of Art, Austin, Texas, 20 November 1999 – 30 January 2000 Comments: By means of lucid dreaming (being aware of dreaming while dreaming), one can surround oneself with colored spheres of light and breathe their healing vibrations. Lucid dreaming provides the most direct experience of non-albedo light. The definition of non-albedo light has its origin in Goethe’s 1810 study on color theory, Zur Farbenlehre. In it, Goethe states that both light and darkness are of equal value to the human mind in its quest to model the universe both backward and forward in time: “Colors are the actions and sufferings of light as a result of its meeting with darkness.” Newton’s concept of light (or the albedo definition of light) states that colors are fractions of the incident radiation of white light, reflected by the surfaces of bodies or refracted through mediums which slow their velocity (first determined in a vacuum). Albedo light is assumed to be generated from point sources such as candle flames, fires, lightning, stars, and artificial light sources. As darkness was assumed to be unable to resist the penetration of albedo light rays, Newton defined a potential for its complete elimination. The lux of the mind is non-albedo light. It contains the power of both light and dark, possessing neither brightness nor opaqueness as its true nature. However, the lux can offer the appearance of both and any admixture in between, thus imitating the entire history of the natural universe. Color healing depends on the manipulation of pure color at will from the second, third, and fourth dimensional realms. Colors represented in situations such as abstract art, color charts and wheels, colored lights, water, or window glass, etc., are only illustrations of pure color not found in the external world. It is only in the lucid dream-state that pure color is possible. Pure color is a volumetric extension of a single color, such as a sphere of redness in which the color is not propagated from a point source of energy. Instead it exists in a homogeneous and isotropic state. Pure color cannot be experienced from the absolute blackness that surrounds it. One must enter the volumetric extension of the color to experience its purity, which means it contains no blackness at all. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Mellonchron, 1985 Oil, acrylic, lettering on canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: he Impact of the Future Comments: Prior to the 20th Century the geometries that described the passage of time, and the nature of the past, present and future were limited to linear concepts such as the straight line or the circle. These constraints were considered only as metaphor. It is said that the straight line (without width) allows for the ideas of progress, free will, and the process of evolution. The circle is the choice of those who believe in eternal recurrence of events and fate. Entering the 20th Century biological mathematicians like René Thom began to realize that there is no such thing as "pure" mathematics with no applications at all. To Thom if you discuss the biological passage of time in relation to geometry you are literally practicing magic-- that is making and existential connection between an aspect of reality and an abstract concept. In fact, he goes on to claim that, "geometry is successful magic." When I say, therefore, that I can make the past and future by using the form of the Alexander Horned sphere (a topological form discovered by J.W. Alexander in 1924), which depends on reciprocal, recursive regeneration of form, I have created a magic Talisman. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) De Rerum Natura, 1985 Oil, acrylic, ink and lettering on canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: The Nature of the Universe and the Human Condition Symbol Evocation: Venus the Goddess of Creation as Free Will and Chance Comments: The details of the life and career of the Roman poet Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus, ca. 99-55 BC) are unknown. His famous didactic poem, written in dactylic hexameter, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), presents the world of ontological materialism, a philosophy derived from Democritus (460-370 BC) and his mentor Leucippus (b. 450 BC). Lucretius came to his position on materialism via the ethics of Epicurus (341-270 BC). The resulting way of life that Lucretius preaches is not dissimilar to the contemporary vision of agnostic science. Although originally written to blunt the fear of death and dispel the supersition of religion, De Rerum Natura remains for us a curious precursor of our modern (or should I say post-modern) sensibility of toal fanaticism combined with a dynamic indifference toward everything. The clinamen atomorus, or the doctrine of chance atomic swerve as the basis of nature and free will, is echoes today by quantum theory which states that nature does not develop smoothly but rather moves by jumps in a milieu of uncertainty. Invoking a complex image of Venus in its six books, the poem states that the universe is composed of three entities: 1) infinite space without form; 2) indestructible atoms, having size, shape, and weight, but no secondary qualities; and 3) the falling of atoms in parallel lines that swerve slightly by chance. These chance swerves form worlds, minds, spirits, and the gods, but when the swerve dissipates all that remains are atoms in the void. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Aetheiapolis, 1987 Oil, acrylic, ink and lettering on canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: The Organization of Individual Minds into a System for a Specific Purpose Symbol Evocation: The Form of Utopia Comments: The Aetheiapolis, or Singularity City, is a proposed conceptual city with one function: to realize the true nature of the form of utopia. The sixty-four inhabitants are made up of thirty-two people from the present, sixteen from the past, and sixteen from the future. It is of paramount importance to the concept of utopia to consult people from the past and future in order to avoid being temporally parasitic to the social intentions of those already dead and possibly temporally destructive toward the social intentions of those yet unborn. Most utopias are presented as constructs already in medias res with no indication of how they came to exist, or in what way they might dissolve of disrupt future societies. My city attempts to answer this problem. It is not, therefore, a utopia, but a device for confronting the entity of utopia. The Aetheiapolis is built on a fifty-foot deep brine pond 1,000 feet in diameter which contains a hydromedusa, or jellyfish, genetically programmed to reach a diameter of 650 feet. At this size the jellyfish cannot possibly move and its electrical and psychic circuitry can be used. Thirty-two astral projection chambers are mounted at the end of the tendrils. Between the tendrils are thirty-two time machines controlled from the astral projection chambers. Sixteen of the time machines are tuned specific space-time coordinates in the past, and sixteen tuned to coordinates in the future. Through various electronic and psychotronic devices such as the Project Hermes Device, the particular resonant frequencies of the sixty-four souls of the inhabitants are converged into a standing wave and directed to the tetraheptahedron. This piezoelectric crystal form is modeled on the firestone crystal that Edgar Cayce claimed was the main motive power source on Atlantis. Because the tetraheptahedron is spun simultaneously on three perpendicular axes by means of nested rings, it subsumes lower dimensions. The tetraheptahedron creates the passage from dianoia (reason) to episteme (pure thought), or from the fourth to the fifth dimensional realm and back again. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Thanaton III, 1989 Oil, acrylic, ink, lettering on canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: A Visitation by a Flying Saucer and Alien Symbol Evocation: The tortoise as the Earth-Mother, the Support of the World Comments: The painting depicts an extraterrestrial's exhortation to me, explaining how to: 1) Link life to death in a continuous experience. 2) Utilize the resulting thanatonic energy to travel faster than the speed of light, turn matter into consciousness and back again, alter evolution at will and exist simultaneously at every moment of time. 3) Move the entire universe into the fifth dimensional realm, and say when in history it is possible for this to happen. I have also received other information I cannot understand. Since this information was given to me directly but not for me per se, it must be communicated to others, many of whom are better prepared than I to receive it. Accordingly I was also shown how to make the painting into psychotronic, or mind-matter interactive device which is activated by approaching the painting, stretching out your arms, touching the upright hands and staring into the eye. By doing this, new information will come to you through the active use of the divine proportion, which is the proportion of life connecting to death. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Mind Body Alpha: The Centroid of the Universe, 1989 Oil, Acrylic, Ink, Letraset on Primed Canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Lettering: Mind-Body Alpha: The Centroid of the Universe Beginning top center around clockwise, inner most band The Open Channel to Absolute Truth The Pain of Insight The Objective Sun-Dark The Revelation of the Lightform The Subjective Lux The System of the Cosmos The Revelation of the Word: Drama The Confusion of Chaos The Stability of Chaos The Stability of Spin The Revelation of the Sound Vibration The Invariance of Oscillation The Pleasure of Paradox Margin band top around clockwise Mind-Body Appha: The Centroid of the Universe The Mind-Body Alpha is a Generative-Formative Principle that is neither consciousness nor matter The Mind-Body Alpha Hyperspphere: the Total Convirginal contact of the transmogrifications of being with ecoming in which Darkness-Light, Silence-Sound, Death-life are continuous The Mind-Body Alpha is an entity that is at once absolutely motionless and absolutely unconscious Small band at the bottom Note: The hpersphere is a geometreal entity in which its vacuum-void centroidis constantly exchanging places with its totally penetrable peripheral surface. This means that while its extension is invariant-being neither infinite nor infintesinmal its existence vacillates periodically between being and non being. The Unity of thephysical and the metaphysical: The Pataphysical Bottom band Homage to : Carl Neumann, Streintz, Carl Jung, Johann W. on Goethe, Georg Hegel, Gottfried W. von Leibnitz, Isaac Newton, Galileo, William Crookes, Immanuel Kant, Bertrand Russell, A. Jarry Center Pure Being Pure Becoming Zarg Ziel sound,dark, light, silence, work, (?igno) Biosathanatos The convergene of absolute deathness with absolute aliveness Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Eloptic Nohmagraphon, 1989 Oil, Acrylic, Ink, Lettering on Canvas 37 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: Recording the Degrees of Embodiment of an Entity Symbol Evocation: The Lux: The Inner Light of the Mind that can Model the Complete Appearance and History of the Universe Comments: Mind-physics or the physics of consciousness- what will most certainly be the physics of choice for the 21st Century (The Bauharoque Period) will involve many aspects, and these aspects will be understood only in a transdisciplinary manner. One aspect, the Vedic concept of the Tulpa (written of in 1000 BC) is crucial to the development of mind-physics. The word Tulpa is similar to the word Tulka, which means the continuity of a particular consciousness (or Soul) from one life-time to another by means of reincarnation. On the one hand, the Tulka also refers to indications or clues in the physical realm that prove reincarnation has taken place. On the other hand, the word Tulpa is much more generic and can be translated from Sanskrit as "that which manifests," but does so in specific degrees of embodiment such as; an idea in the mind, a ghost, a lucid dream, eidetic images, UFOs, angels, religious healings, charisms, and thought-forms, occasions of ectoplasmic mystagogues, and, of course, independent holoforms such as humans, animals, plants and minerals, constructed instrumentality- in short, the entire physical universe. The concept of the Tulpa implies that while consciousness and mass are at base totally continuous, the manifestation of consciousness-mass occurs with specified discontinuities. This is similar in Quantum mechanics to the ideas of valence and conduction bands, definite ranges of energy levels that allow electrons to remain with or leave from particular atomic structures (the quantum jump). The Tulpa is also similar to the traditional notion of geometric proportioning: the Canon of proportioning, Phi, the divine proportion, the curves of life and death, and sacred geometry: the logarithmic spiral, and the Fibonacci number series: (.382…/.618…), (x2-x-1=0), etc. While the Canon has been a part of Western culture since the time of ancient Egypt (artists and architects "idealized" aspects of nature and growth patterns with these proportions and then used them in art works), today scientists are beginning to recognize these geometric proportions as actual aspects of quantum mechanics at the macro scale of nature. The Eloptic Nohmagraphon is a psychotronic (mind-matter interactive) device that is capable of photographing Tulpas of a lesser degree of embodiment than independent holoforms (so-called reality elements). It is sometimes called a "thought camera," but this is a partial misnomer. Neither is it a camera in the sense that it records physical phenomena, nor does it record conceptual thought on film. The range of image recording extends back in manifestation from the albedo imagery of the photonic realm of physical light, up to and including a small portion of the non-albedo light (or the lux) of the mind. Its target images are generated eidetically in the mind and cover such subjects as lucid dreams, ghosts, UFOs and religious manifestations (the so-called "thought-forms"). While there are individuals who can project their own "thought-forms" onto films like Jesus did onto his burial shroud, the Eloptic Nohmagraphon allows anyone to record their "thought-forms." Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Geochronmechane: The Time Machine from the Earth, 1990 Serigraph in colored inks, with corrections by the artist in colored pencils Coventry acid-free rag No. 19 from an Edition of 75 Paper: 32 x 32 in. 81.4 x 81.4 cm Image: 28 x 28 in. 71.2 x 71.2 cm Exhibitions: Science and Science Fiction, Castle Art Gallery, College of New Rochelle, NY, 6 February thru 1 April, 2001. The UFO Show University Galleries, Illinois State University, IL. The UFO Show Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas, 29 September - 27 November, 2000. The UFO Show University of Colorado, 15 December - 2 February, 2001 Architectonic Thought Forms: a Survey of the Art of Paul Laffoley. A Traveling Exhibition organized by the Austin Museum of Art, TX., 1999 Paul Laffoley: The Tree of Sephiroth and Other Drawings, Kent Gallery, N.Y., 1999 Paul Laffoley: Building the Bauharoque. Kent Gallery, N.Y., 1998 Comments: It is now just five years since the centennial celebration of the 1895 publication of the famous novel by H.G. Wells (1866-1946) -The Time Machine. The subject matter of science fiction has long been recognized as a fruitful source of ad hoc research and development. However, it was not until the mid 1950's (the period of the beginning of the maturity of our vision of technology) that this recognition became widespread and socially obvious. The concept of the Time Machine, in short, has been considered by its nature impossible and absurd. Wells gave the impression of the Time Machine as being essentially modern, while its theoretical structure is Neo-Medieval. Neo-Medievalism became one of the strongest creative forces to permeate 19th century Europe and America. It encouraged a taste for purpose and the exotic in places, religious and manners of thought. Eventually it culminated at the end of the century in the International Symbolist-Mystical movement. Since the early 1940's to the present various theoretical physicists have been offering solutions to the equations of Einstein that postulate the possibility of time travel. The space shuttle program has been discussing the launch of an earth satellite-based experiment known as the "Gravity-Prove-B." This experiment will be an attempt to test Einstein's "General Theory of Relativity." This, of course, is Einstein's "tough" theory (the one that predicts the possibility of time travel. What has made the difference about the intellectual reaction to Wells from his time to ours is that the nature and definition of the intellectual has changed. Wells worked in a world populated by men of purpose and action, like Alexander G. Eiffel (1856-1923), Washington A. Roebling (1837-1926), Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), Le Corbuster (1887-1965), Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), and Albert Einstein (1879-1955). While each active in their own pursuits, they also managed to maintain a perspective of the world. From 1973 to the present, I have been working on ways to further the design of a feasible Time Machine. I have placed the main mechanism at the geostationary orbit of the earth for several reasons, the most important of which is that to me the geostationary orbit of the earth is the inertial frame reference of the earth. It is said that if the Time Machine really existed, we would already know of it. I say it has always been here, and we are beginning to become aware of it. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Dimensionality: The Manifestation of Fate, 1992 Oil, Acrylic, Ink, Lettering on Canvas 98 1/2 x 49 1/2 in. Subject: The Natural Octave of Spatiality and Temporality Symbol Evocation: The Geometric Force of the Tension between Fate and Free Will Comments: The rationalized dimensionality above and below the Euclidean third dimension (or the so-called "consensus" reality) was the work of the geometer and astronomer Carl Fredrich Gauss (1777-1855), who conceived of a higher-dimensional analytic geometry, and the mathematician-physicist Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866), who as a student was influenced by Gauss. Riemann advanced the thought by developing an N-dimensional manifold with a metric (a rule for assigning lengths to paths), which meant you could now consider force or energy as a consequence of geometry, thus making the laws of nature seem simpler when viewed from the context of higher dimensional space. From the mid-Nineteenth Century until now, dimensionality has gradually replaced the traditional concept of Fate-- the three goddesses who determine the course of human life: Cloth (the spinner- who spins the thread of life), Lachesis (the disposer of lots-who determines the length of life) and Atropos (the inflexible- who cuts off the thread of life). I Rationalized dimensionality above and below the third dimensional realm – the dimension that has been defined as “consensus reality” – is the work of the Geometer and Astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss [1777-1855], who conceived of a higher-dimensional analytic geometry, and the mathematician-physicist Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann [1826-1866], who as a student was influenced by Gauss. From 300 B.C.E. to 1854, the third dimension of the ancient Greek geometer Euclid held sway over the spatial imaginations of most of the population of the western world. Even a mind as brilliant as that possessed by Sir Isaac Newton [1642-1727] was not immune. The sense of the misplaced absolutism concerning space and time was never challenged, with the exception of G.W. Leibniz [1646-1716], until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Then a number of mathematicians began to voice a new direction such as Nikolay Ivanvich Lobachevsky [1792-1856] and Janos Bolyai [ ]. But it was ultimately Riemann who advanced the concept of dimensionality into an n-dimensional manifold with a metric so as to establish a quantitative rule for assigning lengths to paths. This now meant that one could consider force or energy to be consequence of geometry, making the laws of nature seem simpler when viewed from the context of a more comprehensive dimensional space. The apotheosis of his thinking resulted in the revolution in physics initiated in the early twentieth century by Albert Einstein [1879-1955] and continues to influence contemporary physics although modified into quantum geometry. II From the mid-nineteenth century until now, dimensionality has gradually replaced the traditional concept of fate, first anthropomorphized by the ancient Greeks as three female sovereigns who determine the course of human life. The Fates from the Latin “fata” [singular – “fatum”] derives from the ancient Greek word “moirai” [singular – “moira”]. Both words mean “prophetic declarations” or “oracular utterance.” When an event is said to be fated, it is the same as that particular event being decreed to come to pass. But for humanity the future always remains unknowable except for an occasional divine inspiration, which is seldom heeded. The interlocutor for the Romans was Jupiter, while the decisions of the Fates for the Greeks were spoken by Zeus. Cassandra, a daughter of Priam [king of Troy], was endowed with the gift of prophecy but fated never to be believed. This is the condition the human species finds itself in relation to the future, never to know the absolute future, but always believing it can. In Greek and Roman cultures, the three Fates: 1) Clotho- the spinner – she who spins the thread of life 2) Lachesis- the disposer of lots – she who determines the length of life 3) Atropos- the inflexible – she who cuts off the thread of life all three were called goddesses. They were, however, of such primordial nature that even early Greek commentators such as the poet Hesiod [Fl. ca. 800 B.C.E.] and the historian Herodotus [ca. 484-420 B.C.E], considered them Titans [the parents of the gods]. Eventually even that description would not suffice. Ultimately the function of the Fates in the universe became associated with the term “anagke” or necessity. This is a concept that includes the notions of both the abstract and the concrete, an idea for which we have no word because it is assumed that they are opposites. Even the ancient Greek philosopher Plato [ca. 428-348 B.C.E.] was unable to find a principle that would act as a sufficient contrary to necessity. He proposed the concept “nous” or reason. In the Timaeus, one of his last writings, he had to accept that reason – the highest and most perfect knowledge humans could strive for – could only persuade the dictates of necessity, that is sometimes the fact that necessity has no particular concern for the human condition either individually or collectively cast a shadow on the efficacy of reason to persuade anything. This doubt led in classical Greek drama to a tragic sense of life in which humanity lives in a tension of faith in the future and hope for personal control in the present by reason. And since life seems like an abrupt vacillation between joy and agony, passion and apathy, success and struggle, it was assumed that all human concerns are subject to the whim of the gods. And sometimes even the gods are dominated by necessity. III The discovery of chance or caprice to be paradoxically at the heart if the Fates led the ancient Greeks to wonder to what extent the human soul might be in some similar fashion free and not just a marionette of the gods. From then on the history of Western thought became a philosophical investigation based on the theme of fate and human freedom. On the one had, fate was viewed as the phenomena of existence that we all have to endure regardless of who we are, while on the other hand, the soul and or consciousness became the repository of an endless investigation over the centuries on precisely how free we actually are and under what circumstances. The concern for the phenomena of existence became naturphilosopie or the philosophy of nature. Its subject matter was, at the end of the nineteenth century, nearly all the objective sciences, which eventually fell under the rubric of quantitative science. For years the study of physics was known as the most favored among the absolute or formal studies. As we enter the twenty-first century it seems that biology has pulled ahead and now physics is becoming one of the applied sciences. Lebensphilosophie or the philosophy of life was at mid-nineteenth century defined as an overall vision of / or attitude toward life in general and the purpose of human life in particular. Deriving from The Zeitgeist – a concept invented by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1832] in 1790 – Lebensphilosophie was gradually fleshed out as the intellectual, moral, historical, religious, and cultural climate of an era. In order to discover the degrees of freedom possessed by the human soul, it became necessary to throw out the widest net possible to encompass those subjects, which eventually were called the humanities. These are the branches of learning such as philosophy languages or arts that investigate human constructs and concerns as opposed to natural processes as in physics or chemistry. The humanities, of course, began by being concerned with quality – one of the basic categories of Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E]. Quality is defined as that by virtue of which a thing is such and such. It may be a habit, disposition, capacity, or the form and figure of a thing. Qualities were considered primary and secondary. The primaries of things are solidity, extension, figure, motion, rest, and number. Secondary qualities are colors, sounds, tastes, smells, etc. But by the beginning of the eighteenth century, George Berkeley [1685-1753], Irish philosopher and bishop, challenged Aristotle’s distinction with his identification of being with perception. “Esse est percipi” [To be is to be perceived] was his philosophical slogan. Berkeley called his philosophy of life Immaterialism, that is, nothing material exists, agreeing with the English philosopher John Locke [1632-1704] that all ideas originate in sense experience. We have, therefore, no immediate perception of our three-dimensional world. Instead, claimed Berkeley, we experience our sensations by means of cooperation amongst the senses, while learning to refer these impressions to their appropriate spatial distances, and thereby correctly interpret their magnitudes. IV For most of the nineteenth century and for seventy years into the twentieth century, the philosophy of nature held sway as objective quantitative science, while the sense of quality associated with the philosophy of life was looked upon with suspicion, if tolerated at all. This reign of quantity [that is useless to assess the nature of consciousness, let alone such concepts as soul and spirit] became the intellectual means by which pseudoscientific statements of the time could be tolerated and eventually fostered. One statement that was particularly vicious and so typical of the mid-nineteen fifties could be heard on the campus of any college teaching the school of psychology known as behaviorism. And that was: “The mind is just an out moded nineteenth century concept – soon the be as extinct as the dodo.” The preaching of behaviorism entails the taking of the objective evidence of behavior [as measured responses to stimuli] as the only concern of its research and the only basis of its theory. Any reference to conscious experience was strictly eschewed. The main advocates of this position were: First: Ivan Petrovich Pavlov [1849-1936] A Russian professor of physiology who developed a theory of what he called “conditioned reflexes,” that is training dogs to respond to bells so that they associated the sound with the presence of food; eventually Pavlov was able to induce his dogs to salivate to at the sounds of a bell even when food was not forthcoming; the inspiration for these experiments came from the American poet and short story writer Edgar Allan Poe [1809-1849]; one of Poe’s tales of crime and mystery written in a more scientific than supernatural mode and set in Paris, became the specific source of Pavlov’s literary influence; the title was, of course, “Murders in the Rue Morgue;” in the story a chimpanzee had been trained by the sound of a bell to rob and sometimes murder those individuals who got in the way of the theft; the trainer is a member of a carnival, who preaches a kind of proto-evolution to an indifferent world and utilizes the great anthropoid ape as his educational autoscope; eventually continuous ridicule of his precious theories drives the animal trainer into full psychosis after that he exacts punishment on his mockers by relieving them of their most precious jewels and occasionally their rude and obtuse lives by means of bell, beast, and reward; Second: The real Father of Behavioral Psychology was John Broadus Watson [1878-1958], an American psychologist born in Greenville, South Carolina who taught at Johns Hopkins; his strategy was to summarily reject any form of introspection and make sure that all psychological data is restricted to direct observation and laboratory experiments; any references to consciousness, purpose, or the concept of the mind were ruled out by his methods; And Third: The final major player in behaviorism was Burrhus Frederik Skinner [1904-1990], although he changed its name to “Operationalism”, or “Operationism,” or finally to the more clinical designation of “Operant Conditioning” [this is a form of conditioning in which the desired behavior or increasingly closer approximations of it are followed by a rewarding or reinforcing stimulus]; Skinner was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, the site of Utopian interest by English Quakers since 1681, the chemist Joseph Priestly [1733-1804], and the proposed site of an intentional community of radical design both politically and architecturally called “Xanatopia” by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834]; Skinner was educated at Hamilton College and Harvard University before entering the field of psychology and prior to Harvard itself, he spent a short time trying to become a writer in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan; realizing then he had nothing to say as a novelist, he stepped out of The Philosophy of Life and plunged headfirst into The Philosophy of Nature and brought to Harvard a new direction in the study of psychology, which at that time was more culture than science; his now classic “Skinner Box” of the nineteen forties [a laboratory apparatus in which an animal is caged for experiments in operant conditioning and which typically contains a lever that must be pressed by the animal to gain reward or avoid punishment] became the focus of his detractors; when he switched his subjects from rats to people in the boxes, they claimed he had moved from science to science-fiction; and his detractors were right because it was no longer possible to tell who was conditioning whom; eventually Skinner realized he had not lost his talent as a writer of fiction, because in 1948 he published a major novel entitled “Walden Two”; this was his version of Utopia based on the operant conditioning of all its inhabitants into a perfect harmony of behavior; in the early nineteen sixties and intentional community called Twin Oaks was based on the book, but it soon became just another commune; even the name “Walden Two” was literary and dramatic; his reference to the writer Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862] and his journal about a few months of living at Walden Pond was one thing, but to do it in such an obviously redux manner turned out to be the forerunner, by thirty years, of the Hollywood practice of developing enumerated sequels to movie blockbusters; the nineteen sixties, however, brought an unexpected backlash with it, suddenly the “Reign of Quantity” was over, at least as far as pop culture was concerned; now Skinner became as annoyed with the world as he had made the world annoyed with him. V The advent of pop art in the late nineteen-fifties made way for the sixth incarnation of “The New Age”. From the mid-nineteenth century to the present, to be in “The New Age” meant to subscribe to a utopian social movement that drew upon ancient concepts, especially from Egyptian to Eastern and Native American traditions. It incorporated such themes as holism, a concern for nature, alternative modes of science-like free energy and mind-physics, mediumship, and a spiritual form of metaphysics. The philosophical basis of the movement coalesced at the turn of the twentieth century around the independence and external relatedness of objects of knowledge. Seeking a “new realism” that united acts of awareness with these objects of knowledge, “New Age” philosophers called upon the work of American philosopher William James [1842-1910]. Philosophically, the thought of James emerged from the tension between his commitment to science and the attractiveness of a personal religious faith. To resolve this tension, he developed a new view of “pure experience” to steer his way between the extremes of idealism and materialism in order to propose the existence of a neutral entity underlying both “mind-stuff” and “matter-stuff.” His new ontic position was very close to the primary insights of The Vedas and Zen [a Japanese sect of Mahayana Buddhism]. The difference between the first five forms of “New Age” thinking and what became prominent during the sixties was an inordinate concern for the mass media and crass commercialism by many of its self-styled leaders. This delayed the integration by academia of this new thought by at least twenty-five years, leading people like B.F. Skinner to believe their positions were still viable. In 1971, Skinner published what became, I believe, the twilight of The Reign of Quantity. His final book, entitled Beyond Freedom and Dignity, attempted to take the concepts of operant conditioning that had been applied to a fictive and isolated utopian community and assume these principles could work in the real world of large-scale cultures and eventually the design of the whole earth. His idea follows the form of Plato who took his utopian thinking from the thought experiment of The Republic to the specific community planning and social engineering of The Laws. Skinner, nevertheless, eschewed the spirit of Plato in the end. The contemporary German theologian Paul Tillich [1886-1965], who taught theology in the United States from 1933 to his death presented the problem of Utopia in 1951 in an essay entitled: “Critique and Justification of Utopia”. It is a living tension between, on the one hand, the desires and the collective elements of society and, on the other hand, the needs of the immiscible self – this living tension appears to be “the suspension between the possible and the impossible” according to the perspective of reason. But the existence of Utopia depends upon the type of reason you use. He distinguished among three types: 1) Heteronomous Reason – that takes its principles from outside itself and is therefore artificial, serves the collective; 2) Autonomous Reason – that takes its principles from within, but thereby reveals itself as vacuous and tautological, serves only the immiscible self; and 3) Theonomous Reason – that which is more deeply based, its fundament is “The Ground of Being” itself and thus transcends the concepts of the possible and the impossible. “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” reveals Skinner to be caught up in heteronomous reason only. He defines concepts such a “freedom” and “dignity” as presuming what he calls the fiction of the autonomous individual. According to him, what should occur is a crisp and explicit intentional culture and world design employing a technology of behavior, which will reinforce those who have been induced by its cultural planning principles to work for its survival. What Skinner is describing, of course, is society planned as a military complex such as ancient Rome at its height during the time of Hadrian, its fourteenth emperor [76-138], or an insect colony. The problem with these social structures is that they require preemptive violence to bring them into being, and preemptive violence to maintain their form. While this situation is tolerated on the non-human level by humans [with the exception of personal pets or societies for the ethical treatment of animals and ecology groups – but even these organizations reflect human values and not the values of any particular animal]. On the human level it is, nevertheless, a rare person who can care about the destination of an individual bee or ant unless that individual insect stings or bites. Then any potential care turns directly into respect for the caliber of the insect’s personal weaponry. And what are we to say about the average mosquito? VI In a recent book called “The Beehive Metaphor” [1998] by Juan Antonio Ramirez [professor of art history at El Universidad Autonoma de Madrid] argues that the natural architecture and social life of bees [apis mellifera] was one of the major inspirational metaphors for the artists and architects of “The Modern Movement”, coming out of the nineteenth century into the early twentieth. The metaphor extols the virtues of bees: hard work, parsimony, creativity, dedication to duty, a common purpose, and a monarchical matriarchy. Where some have seen an “apicultural utopia” others have seen nothing but a potential for fascism of either the right or the left as the result of the principle of modifying human behavior by architecture, in the same way that it is possible to substantially modify the work efficiency of honey bees. As Ramirez notes: “The panopticon, developed at the end of the eighteenth century by Jeremy Bentham, reveals a similar desire to modify behavior by means of increased observation of the convicted criminal. A single person observes and controls the cells of many prisoners arranged radially around a central tower. This arrangement, as Michel Foucault has demonstrated, had important consequences for the design of hospitals, prisons, and educational institutions. I believe that the grand plan of transferring these principles to the design of ordinary dwellings did not develop until the 1920s, when the ideological suppositions of the modern movement began to take shape.” When the bottom dropped out of modernism leading to post-modernism, “The Beehive Metaphor” was blamed. A form of art was presented to the masses to educate and save them from themselves. But this art was ultimately sold to the privileged elite who are able to substitute money for taste and understanding until they reached a level of acquaintance with something new to them. In terms of architecture – “housing for the ever increasing masses” – the rallying cry of The Bauhaus School along with many of the modern master-builders, was also subverted. The goal of “affordable housing” produced an imagery derived from new materials and economies of structure developed from standardized, industrialized, and modular building systems, became lass an architectural solution to pressing social problems and more a symbolic form of language that could be used for extremely expensive custom design. The years after the nineteen thirties and forties, when the planning principles of modernism began to be put into effect for their “stated purposes,” the mass housing projects that were built proved to be hotbeds of physical abuse and terror-violence. By the nineteen seventies, other solutions for architecture were sought and mass housing projects were for the most part ignored. The quest for utopic space, one of the goals of modernism, was for a while completely thwarted. VII Now that the world has moved on to the third phase of modernism, called by various authors, as: “transmodernism,” “post-postmodernism,” “the bauharoque,” or “neo-modernism,” the quest for utopic space has been once again revived, and the strategy is to move from heteronomous and autonomous reasoning directly to the theonomous. In returning to modernism with the advantage of understanding in what ways it has failed, it is possible to see that what went wrong was the fact that the version of modernism that was passed on to succeeding generations consisted mainly of an exhortation to be concerned with the advanced of science combined with the artist’s and architect’s intuitive plastic-vision. This meant the intuition of the traditional Euclidean-Renaissance space in terms of visual implications plus a conditional addition of new science facts and the subtraction of those considered to be obsolete. While this program gave the appearance of the new, it was little more than a repetition of the nineteenth century agenda. Much of the real heart of modernism was hidden from those who would help build a true tradition by its innovators. In the attempt to appear oracular and laconic in order to preserve for themselves the power that their cultural inventions had generated, the originators of modernism remained within the domain of autonomous reasoning, indulging in non-sequiturs, and allowing advocates of heteronomous reasoning or The Philosophy of Nature to hold sway over the direction of culture free from opposition. What is necessary and what is now occurring, in this third phase of modernism, is the use of theonomous reasoning. While often being called transdisciplinary, theonomous reasoning is actually a first step back to ancient wisdom in which methodological sensation [or what we now know as science] has completely merged with methodological revelation [or totally known mystical knowledge in which every aspect of the occult has been overcome]. A true tradition has no occult or hidden phases left in its process. The creators and the audience are in perfect harmony. VIII A tradition of culture is like a mighty river flowing to the oneness of open sea, but a tradition like a river is fed by many streams and tributaries. In the case of modernism – a very rich and complex tradition still in formation – a few of its streams of inspiration can be mentioned: 1) The Quest for Utopia: In terms of producing a harmonious living system or an intentional community, and an analysis of utopic space – the space that initiates and supports a utopian community on earth or in outer space; 2) The Commitment to Science: In terms of following the scientific method in relation to an ethical code which does not distort the truth of science; and utilizing the technology and systems of science, producing a design science; 3) The Use of History: For modernism, history is not just the imaginative reconstruction of the past, but a design tool to determine the authentically new from the past as opposed to what has been lauded as original and turns out not to be; this is history as the inverse of science fiction [which attempts to project ideas developed in the present onto a future scenario to help separate the merely fashionable from the new]; and to create a morgue of ideas from the past that can be revived because they have shown to be authentically new as history unfolds; 4) The Metaphors of Modernism: There are many metaphors such as: the biomorphic; the mechanical; “The Beehive Metaphor” [previously mentioned] which is a subset of the urban metaphor that states that urbanism is the controlling structure throughout the universe, from the microcosm to the macrocosm [from the world of architecture such terms to describe land use like wild wood, rural, exurban, suburban, all point to a potential urbanism]; the systematic and the diagrammatic; etc.; 5) Dimensionality: A) In terms of imagery, dimensionality belongs to the systematic and diagrammatic, but its unique context has caused it to be considered in a category by itself; although dimensionality as a rational conept has been in existence in the west for 2301 years, it is only in the past 147 years that it has become an issue which places it in the realm of the authentically new; as the contemporary physicist Brian Greene, advocate of string theory, said of that period in the mid-nineteenth century: “Nevertheless, we should not lose sight of the favorable historical circumstances that strongly contributed to Einstein’s success. Foremost among these are the nineteenth century mathematical insights of Georg Bernhard Riemann that firmly established the geometrical apparatus for describing curved spaces of arbitrary dimension. In his famous 1854 inaugural lecture at the University of Göttingen, Riemann broke the chains of flat-space Euclidean thought and paved the way for a democratic mathematical treatment of geometry on all varieties of curved surfaces.” ; now while space and time have been considered as two of the ultimate categories of natural philosophy [naturphilosophie], dimensionality is somewhat different; the difference began with the eighteenth century German philosopher Immanuel Kant [1724-1804] who initiated his thought process from consciousness rather than the products of consciousness; his position on space and time is to the raw data of sensation we add the concepts or forms of spatiality and temporality; space is the form of the external sense and time the form of the internal sense; but we never experience anything except that which is within the spatiality and temporality; and yet somehow we never experience space and time directly; therefore, the space and time in which we order phenomena must derive not from sensation, but from consciousness itself; Kant’s position goes a long way to explain why space has been more acceptable than time; space deals with the discontinuous, the discrete, the concrete, the finite; whereas time doubles the effect of consciousness and its expression is the continuous, the abstract and the infinite; because of the differences between spatiality and temporality, space has always been more easily understood and has resulted in the spatializing of time and in many cases an actual disbelief in the existence of time itself; Henri Bergson [1859-1941] the philosopher of time, criticized the space-time continuum of Hermann Minkowski [1864-1909] –Einstein’s teacher of mathematics – by saying that this structure was another attempt to spatialize time’s nature out of existence similar to the attempt of the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides [ca. 515-450 B.C.E.]; opposing reason and concept and space to intuition and metaphor and time, Bergson re-established for modern Europe the insights about space and time developed by the Indian philosopher Shankara [788-820]; his Vedic position is called the Advaita [non-dualistic] Vedanta, which allows no distinction between the individual self and the Brahman [the world is an appearance – Brahman and Atman are one]; Shankara taught that space is inherently passive waiting for the human capacity to divide it, while time is inherently active and can overpower the human self; space evokes care in the human heart, while time smothers the human heart in boredom; since the feminine element has been traditionally considered passive and the masculine active, by the principle of achieving unity by means of opposites, it is no wonder, thought Shankara, that the Western concept of the Fates are represented by women because this would be the means to control time into the unity of Brahman; space holds no such terror for the human heart except if its logic leads to occasions of infinites; contemporary physics deplores infinites in nature; they are defined as: “the typical nonsensical answer emerging from calculations that involve general relativity and quantum mechanics in zero-dimensional point-particles;” B) The real issue concerning dimensionality, and what makes it culturally part of modernism, is what is means as a human to be subject to the limits of a dimension; while we all have an almost intuitive sense of what it is like to be immersed with Euclidean space, but there was a time prior to the third century B.C.E. when Euclid’s geometry would have seemed impossible to comprehend, in much the same way that usual perspective introduced by Masaccio [1401-1428] during the Italian Renaissance was not fully appreciated to be a creative extension of Euclidean space; C) When the fourth dimension was proposed around 1875, it was not understood how there could be a fourth ninety degree angle vector coextensive with the familiar three; even the great American Engineer Richard Buckminster Fuller [1895-1983] could not accept such a construct; his solution to more spatial dimensions was simple to reduce one constant; instead of insisting on ninety degrees, he suggested using an angle that would be less; he chose sixty degrees and produced a fourth dimension that could be directly observable; to him the idea of a fourth spatial dimension as the door to something outside the range of ordinary experience is an example of the fable of “The Emperor’s New Clothes;” D) There were, of course, many who did accept such a proposition, for instance, The Theosophical Society – formed in New York City the same year as “The Fourth Dimension” was first spoken of in 1875 – welcomed the notion like the “Grace of God;” theosophy, which combined current scientific concepts with Buddhist and Brahmanic theories of pantheistic evolution and reincarnation saw “the fourth dimension” as the explanation for ghosts, astral projection, lucid dreaming, etc.; “Madame” Helena Petrovna Blavatsky [1831-1891], who vaunted the powers of a medium, formed the society on the Gnostic principles put forth by Ammonius Saccas, the teacher of the neo-Platonist Plotinus [204-270]; Blavatsky’s success depended less on her charisma than the fact that she used the growing power of Charles Darwin [1809-1882] and his idea of scientific evolution to bolster her utopic persuasions in the same manner that Pierre A. LeComte du Noüy [1883-1947] [published “Human Destiny” 1947] and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin [1881-1955] [published “The Phenomenon of Man” 1955] did in the twentieth century; the notoriety that Darwin received from both the religious conservatives and the established scientific community was what Blavatsky needed to launch her concept that evolution was an indication that humans could someday reach the status of gods, and the mystical experience was a foretaste of that new ontic status; and the belief in the fourth dimension by many scientists and mathematicians of her day became her “reason my authority” to declare herself, Annie Besant [1847-1933, the most notable American leader of Theosophy], and the English woman Alice Bailey to be the modern incarnations of the ancient Greek Fates; E) Soon others found this new form of spirituality without traditional religious trappings very much to their liking; for instance, in 1884, Edwin Abbott Abbott wrote the now classic tale of “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions”; Abbott’s strategy [and he was the first to use it] concerning the existence and perception of the fourth dimension, was to write about what life would be like in a less comprehensive dimension than the one that engulfs our existence; he presented by a combination of reason, analogy, and metaphor what it would be like to exist in the second dimension of spatiality and the suddenly realize there was another dimension – the third; by doing this, the hope is to convince the reader that there might be other dimensions that someday will be perceived; immediately there were techniques developed purporting to allow an individual to reach the fourth dimension by the eyes; this was the work of Howard H. Hinton; these two epistemological traditions have continued to this day; right on the heels of Abbott, Claude Fayette Bragdon [... - 1946], an American architect and theosophist, created a way to use the analogy on a lower dimensional world to convince others of the fourth dimension; in his “Primer of Higher Space”, Bragdon presents the most popular geometric form – the tesseract, the fourth dimensional hyper-cube – of his day in such a manner that all the vertices of the hyper-cube were numbered so that in the nineteen sixties Bell Laboratories made a computerized moving shadow of the tesseract; although Bragdon was not lauded to the extent of Henry P. Manning [chairman of the Department of Mathematics at Brown University], Bragdon’s work proved far more creative than the academic treatise on four-dimensional geometry by Manning. Kant’s deeper message – that of temporality – did not go unheeded by thinkers passing through the cultural glories of the fin-de-siècle. Three who developed notions of time as the source of higher or more evolved consciousness were Rudolf Steiner [1861-1925], George Gurdjieff [... -1946], and Peter D. Ouspensky [ ...- ] A) Steiner, a German philosopher who considered the poet Goethe his mentor even though there was 29 years between the death of Goethe and the birth of Steiner, initially argued for an organic view of the universe allowing for spiritual freedom. He entered the Theosophical Society but finally organized his own mystical group called Anthroposophy. He believed in higher dimensions of time, unlike Bergson who claimed the Élan Vital was God working through time and in the world. Steiner believed evolution was not inherent in the passage of time, but was an individual achievement that required spiritual training, which he called “The Cosmic Mission of Art”. B) Gurdjieff, an itinerant teller of tall tales, whose territory was for the most past Western Europe and the Near East with the occasional forays into India. Some say he was a complete charlatan, but he did end his days under the protection of Oligvanna [the third wife of Frank Lloyd Wright] in 1946 at Taliesin West, Wright’s final studio in Arizona. He was able to convince Wright that he was abducted into a flying saucer earlier in 1946. His teachings about time centered about an energy organizing system called the Enneagram. It is a Pythagorean cycle of notes, which in reality is a spiral of fifths based on the classical diatonic scale with two half steps or shocks to human consciousness: do-re-mi [shock one: remember yourself] –fa-sol-la-si [shock two: do not identify with yourself] –do. What Gurdjieff presented is a method of transcending time by means of two natural singularities in time. C) Ouspensky, a professional mathematician who began his career by writing about the fourth dimension, as soon as he met Gurdjieff became his most loyal disciple. After that, Ouspensky’s writings took on a less academic style and became more alchemical and fraught with metaphor. What he was writing about was, among other things, the speculations about the nature of time and possible higher and more comprehensive dimensions of temporality. Gurdjieff had isolated three: time, eternity, and super-eternity. Ouspensky followed an almost Wittgensteinean language analysis of the three concepts, developing “family resemblances” among them – a process that combines reason with metaphor to transcend the definition of simple analogy. Recently physicists have been speculating about the possibility of additional time dimensions as well as extra space dimensions. As Brian Greene has explained: “Third, the requirement of numerous extra dimensions, [to make string theory work] is it possible that some are additional time dimensions, as opposed to additional space dimensions? If you think about this for a moment, you will see that it’s a truly bizarre possibility. We all have a visceral understanding of what it means for the universe to have multiple space dimensions, since we live in a world in which we constantly deal with a plurality – three. But what would it mean to have multiple times? Would one align with time as we presently experience it psychologically while the other would somehow be ‘different?’ But, if a curled-up dimension is a time dimension, traversing it means returning, after a temporal lapse, to a prior instant in time. Some theorists have been exploring the possibility of incorporating extra time dimensions into string theory, but as yet the situation is inconclusive. In our discussion of string theory, we will stick to the more “conventional” approach in which all the curled-up dimensions are space dimensions, but the intriguing possibility of new time dimensions could well play a role in future developments.” The “curled-up dimensions” refer to this proposed Calabi-Yau space or shape into which extra spatial dimensions required by string theory can be curled-up, consistent with the equations of the theory. The size of Calabi-Yau space is defined as so small that there exists no known form of instrumentality to detect their presence. What is of interest is that Gurdjieff and Ouspensky were considering alternative temporal dimensions at the turn of the twentieth century, and what it is like to live in them in terms of possibilities and actualizations. X Ouspensky, besides Gurdjieff, counted many artists and intellectuals of his day as his friends, and was able therefore to directly influence the course of culture on several occasions through his great capacity at networking. One such incident involved Ouspensky’s relationship to the Russian artist who would become the master of Suprematism, Kasimir Malevich [... -1935]. While in the United States negotiating a translation deal with a number of his books, Ouspensky approached Knopf publishers, then located in Manhattan. Knopf agreed, and even knew of a person who could write excellent introduction to the books. That was the American architect and theosophist Claude Fayette Bragdon. Bragdon was extremely popular in New York’s cultural life, but more than that, he was completely at one with the content of Ouspensky’s works. In fact, he had read some in the original Russian. The publishers felt that the spirit of Ouspensky’s writings, via Bragdon’s introductions, would successfully transfer these works into masterpieces of alchemical thought for an American market. Knopf at no time during the process felt that they were taking a risk at giving Ouspensky the prestige of their firm. in fact Bragdon’s name helped build the market for these books, besides his personal efforts in the New York City area. Ouspensky, however, when he arrived in the United States, was unaware of Bragdon. But soon after devouring Bragdon’s book he recognized a kindred soul. Back in Russia, he showed to Malevich Bragdon’s books, which are illustrated by Bragdon. It was a moment of revelation for Malevich. He began to copy the dimensional illustrations until he found a painting format that could equal the impact of work by such notables as Piet Modrian [1872-1944], Wassily Kandinsky [1866-1944], Pablo Picasso [1881-1973], or Marcel Duchamp [1887-1968]. All these artists had at one time in their careers found a way to refer to the contents of higher dimensions as types of “shadows” projected onto a two-dimensional surface, i.e. the picture plane. This process is what Bragdon advocated, but the important element these artists added was the attempt to express what it is like to actually experience being immersed in a dimension other than one is used to, all in terms of greater richness of experience and the encounter with the authentically new. Even into the nineteen thirties and forties, the surrealists utilizing strange dreamlike atmospheres and unnatural juxtapositions assumed they were following higher dimensional thinking, as did the American abstract expressionists and action painters of the mid-twentieth century. These artists felt that any two-dimensional formats of a nonrepresentational intent that managed to avoid being considered decoration by expressing the processes of nature, automatically referred to a higher dimensional experience. XI My own interest in dimensionality as the ultimate context for human experience began by my reading of George Gamow’s “One-Two-Three-Infinity”, first published in 1947. This was when I was in the eighth grade. At that time my reading besides assigned work consisted mainly of comic books, science fiction, and an occasional work like “Eureka: A Prose Poem” by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Lives and Times of Archie and Menitabel” by Don Marquis, or Gamow’s book. I found it almost a scientific version of cartoon oddities one would find in newspaper fixed blocks like “Ripley’s Believe It or Not”. I am sure that Gamow thought of his now classic work as merely an entertainment for the imagination, which is exactly why I was reading it. At that time, if I thought it had any “educational value” I would have dropped it like a plutonium rod. But as it often turns out, what entertains bypasses the conscious critical powers of the mind and, in the end, educates almost without effort or realization. In that book, I first discovered the fourth dimension. There had been talk among my classmates, of course, but it meant nothing until I read and saw Gamou’s lively prose and simple but effective drawings. At once I learned of the tesseract, the Möbius surface, the Klein bottle, infinities of infinity, an excellent cartoon description of the space-time continuum, the enormous yield that results from doubling any number 64 times, what objects look like turned inside out, etc. All this was as separate from my kid life, as my father’s disbelief in gravity and his belief in mind-physics and mediumship. Even my first encounters with classics in prep school [five years of Latin] it did not at first register that I was headed toward a lifetime study of dimensionality. It was only at Brown University, when I entered the Classics department and began to read Plato in the original Greek that a real connection between the Fates and dimensions began to occur to me. While reading “The Republic”, I discovered through the text that there are a series of myths-metaphors-similes that only appear to relate to the text that immediately surrounds them; these similes are so powerful and graphic they connect directly to one’s center of being. I refer to the myth of the cave, the line, and the Sun, which seem more related than the fourth myth of “Er” – the brave soldier who dies on the battlefield. Plato’s doctrine of the forms finds its pictorial expression in the image of the cave where humanity is awash in images projected on a wall like people watching a film. Plato represents the world as a prison and everyone is manacled by ignorance, able to see only the shadows of objects cast on the wall of the cave. The shadows are projections of individual objects being moved before a fire higher up toward the entrance of the cave. The real world outside the cave contains the forms or patterns from which the objects were copied, and also is the Sun or the goal of humanity’s search for truth, beauty and goodness as the One. It is humanity’s task to free itself from it shackles and move into this upper world of the Sun. The means to obtain such freedom lies in the power of human understanding. The development of this saving understanding has been made clear by Plato by means of the myth of the twice-divided line – divided in the divine proportion. The vertical line is a diagram separating opinion [doxa] and knowledge [episteme]. The second division of the line is the dividing of the two main segments again resulting in four proportioned dimensions of knowing. In fact, the dimensions of existence into which humanity has been thrust. The content of this epistemic ladder contains both states of consciousness and the inhabitants or ontological object’s appropriate to these dimensions: the shift in consciousness upward is from unsupported imagination to perceptual belief [and also partially warranted beliefs] to a condition that can be described as mathematical logic [which is similar to lucid dreaming and the effects of hallucinogenics], and finally the dialectical process of reasoning about first principles. The dimensional shift of objects moves from images of appearance to individual objects [which are copies of the universal forms], then onto mathematical and semi-abstract entities [often seen during lucid-dreaming, in which you are aware of being in the dream state while dreaming], and finally arriving at the universal forms. The line represents the belief of Plato that the universal forms are the true reality and therefore the concrete and the world of appearances are the abstract and lifeless. It was at this point in my reading of the text that I realized that dimensionality meant more than simply seeking a new ninety-degree directional subdivision of spatiality. The final myth at the very end of “The Republic” – the story of “Er” was to me less than an epilogue and more of a new direction in Plato’s thought. In terms of the reasoning of “The Republic”, the passage about “Er” is superfluous. But not so for Plato himself, who was a follower of Orphism [a mystic Greek religion offering initiates purification of the soul from innate evil and release from the cycle of reincarnation]. In this myth, “Er” is taken in what is the first of an “near-death-experience,” and shown the nature of the afterlife, the 1000 Earth year sojourn in either heaven or hell, the meeting with the Fates, selection of new lives and rebirths. He comes back to life on the battlefield in order to tell others about his experiences. My first thought when I associated the four myths is that our fate is worked out within a dimensional system [which is mathematical in nature] and the total system is tantamount to the Fates themselves. But there existed one slight difference: the mathematics that Plato subscribed to was Pythagorean and, therefore, involved the quality of numbers as well as quantity. This meant the identification of numbers with the nature of reality. Pythagoras [570-500 B.C.E.] stated that the application of number to the nature of the universe consists in identifying opposites of qualities such as: the limit [peras] and the unlimited [apeiron]; odd and even; the one and the many; right and left; male and female; rest and movement; good and bad; square and oblong; etc. As an example, the number 5 means marriage because after the one, 2 and 3 form 5. 2 is the first even, female, unlimited number. 3 is the first odd, male and limited number. The list has cosmological-mathematical implications. The unlimited was identified with space, and the unlimited that was limited just once becomes the unit or the one. It also stands for the dimensional point. This allows for the possibility for identifying number and reality. One is the point; two is the line; three is the plane; and four is the solid. Hence, by the numbers we have constituted the world. The sum of these critical first small whole numbers is ten; and ten, therefore, is the perfect number because it creates the lambdohma pattern – the basic cosmic weaving diagram of the Fates: The power of the Pythagorean metaphor of the universe has sustained itself in Western culture for the 2531 years. The current search for a unified field theory has led physicists right back to Pythagoras. As Brian Green has stated about super-string theory: Music has long since provided the metaphors of choice for those puzzling over questions of cosmic concern. From the ancient Pythagorean “music of the spheres” to the “harmonies of nature: that have guided inquiry through the ages, we have collectively sought the song of nature in the gentle wanderings of celestial bodies and the riotous fulminations of subatomic particles. With the discovery of the super-string theory, musical metaphors take on a startling reality, for the theory suggests that the microscopic landscape is suffused with tiny strings whose vibrational patterns orchestrate the evolution of the cosmos. The winds of change, according to super-string theory, gust through an Aeolian universe. From my own reading of the myth of “Er,” I agree that super-string theory may be as close as scientists have gotten to interpreting Plato in his Pythagorean mode of thought. But it was not only the ancient Greeks who offered me insights about dimensionality, the ancient Romans did also. What I came away with was the application to my art of one of the Romans’ basic cultural inventions – the outline: the diagram of order of anything of concern in its most concise form. While the word diagram is of Greek origin, it was the Romans who drew them. And, of course, a dimensional system is an outline of existence – both in terms of mass and consciousness – which divides up reality in the same manner that we divide space. Another insight of the Romans referred to was the human reaction to time and the way we endure it. With the simple phrase in medias res [into the midst of things], the message is clear: time is a journey we must all suffer and we are thrust, neither into the beginning, which would give us a chance to direct the streams of time to our liking, nor at the end of time, which would give some perspective on what life is all about. Instead we are thrown, as Brother Blue [Boston’s street poet] would say: “In the middle of the middle of the middle,” of time not knowing where we came from or where we are going. XII I did not begin to use dimensionality as the context of my paintings and drawings until 1967, and I dealt only with temporality up until 1975. In that year, I invented a new type of gyroscope, which I called “The Levogyre”. It consists of a series of nested spheres of fiberglass, and a processional axis that has been fragmented and redistributed in space in the form of two interlocking three-dimensional equiangular spirals. Each shell is filled with ferro-fluidics, which is a ferric compound ground finer that pumice mixed into a very viscous oil, which then acts like copper wire electrically. Each portion of the processional axis is powered by means of on board electric motors mounted within the structure of the axial fragments. On board solenoids act as triggers for outboard radio-frequency power generators. At the torque axis of each shell are mounted fiber optic beds through which are transmitted circular laser beams at, of course, the speed of light. When the device is fired up, it begins with the outermost shell and moves inward creating a torque transfer that increases and, therefore, presses at the speed of light, not as in a mechanical gyroscope where the angular momentum decreases as it approaches the centroid of the device. What I have developed is a method of distorting space-time to such a degree that the Levogyre becomes a structured singularity. A singularity is a point or local region of infinite mass density at which space and time are indefinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of mass-consciousness falling into a black hole. The device weighs less, therefore, while in operation, than at rest. I felt the Levogyre to be a proto-time machine and developed the concept of The Time Machine based on a method of controlling and amplifying pre and retro cognition [pre-perception of the future and retro-perception of the past]. XIII Soon thereafter I began to include references to both spatiality and temporality and their individual aspects in many of the paintings I was completing over the years. Finally in 1992, I was able to collect enough insights to try a definitive rendition of dimensionality: What I did first was to set up the natural octaves of spatiality and temporality between the one [absolute life] and the fall into the many [absolute death]. The octave is that which links the human with the cosmic – the limited with the unlimited. The eight dimensions form a unit called the dimensional realm. Each dimension is a note in an indefinite scale, but eight form a closure, a sense of completion within the endlessness of infinity. The dimensional realm is divided into three vertical sections: the left side is temporality, the source of energy of life and therefore the fate Clotho; the mid-section, which places the human personality within the cosmos, and which joins temporality with spatiality, is the fate Lachesis; the right side is spatiality where rest and motion, or the cutting or non-cutting of energy resides, is the fate Atropos. The entire dimensional realm is in reality an epistemic ladder, the rungs of which are not in some quantitative distinction such as the 90° angle postulate of spatial dimensions made famous by Euclid of Alexandria or René Descartes [1596-1650]. This is not to say that such angular dispositions cannot be applied at all, only that they are not ontically inherent to the definition of individual notes in the dimensional realm. As an example: the definition of a shadow, the only inhabitant of the second dimensional note of spatiality that we can experience directly, without imaginative transposition to a more comprehensive dimensional note, has nothing to do with angles of particular degrees. What fascinates us about a shadow is although we can see it, and know that it exists, we somehow cannot reach down from our position of a more comprehensive dimensional note and turn the shadow over so we can see its “other side.” The reason we cannot do this is because the shadow has only one side. And no amount of claiming to “rotate” a shadow through a higher dimensional note will avail. Turning over a page of a book works because the page and the book both exist in the same dimensional note – the fourth dimension of time-solvoid. XIV There is, however, a way to see the other side of a shadow but still not touch it. This process was invented by August F. Möbius, a German mathematician in the nineteenth century. Like everyone else who lived in the nineteenth century, the activities of Napoleon Bonaparte I [1769-1821], Emperor of France, became a source of endless wonder. Möbius, the mathematician was no exception. What fascinated him the most was Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign and new information brought back of a cultural nature. Why were the ancient Egyptians convinced that the shadow a human would make in relation to the sun was an intrinsic part of the human personality? After all, is not a shadow merely the absence of the positive being of light? This and other questions haunted Möbius until he hit upon his now famous surface – the Möbius strip. It is a one-sided surface with one edge constructed from a rectangular matrix by holding one end fixed and rotating the opposite end through 180 degrees, and joining it to the first end. The first thing that Möbius did was cast an asymmetric shadow onto the strip to prove that his new surface was real and not just a re-oriented torus. Because the shadow never left the surface but became the opposite shape after traversing the entire length, Möbius realized that a shadow can enter an aspect of the third dimensional note of spatiality. What Möbius did not realize, however, was that he had created an inter-dimensional form. While the Möbius surface remained in the second dimension, a part called a “cross-cap” actually exists in the third. In the beginning of the twentieth century, another German mathematician, Felix Klein, built on Möbius’ invention by developing a bottle surface that exists between the third and fourth dimensional notes of spatiality. As a one-sided surface, it is formed by passing the narrow end of a tapered tube through the side of tube and flaring this end out to join the other end. The part of the bottle that exists in the fourth dimension is the penetration aspect, in which one surface enters another without rupture of either surface. The Klein bottle can be subdivided into two Möbius surfaces, one right-handed and one left-handed, or one neutral Möbius surface that can be indefinitely subdivided. There are four more forms which could be described as topological beyond the Klein bottle, such as hyper-Klein bottles as interdimensional forms. But no one knows what these forms might be or how they can be experienced. It is only by conceptualization that these can be postulated at all. Below the shadowland [or the second dimensional note of spatiality], there exist subforms of the Möbius surface, which again are only known by concept: first, since a line is the profile of a shadow that can never be perceived, only implied within a locale similar to the situation of quantum dynamics, the form that connects a shadow with its profile is a series of infinite infinitesimals that advance together in succession; second, from the line to a point the series infinite infinitesimals converge on each other. XV The place of the human personality within the dimensional realm is between the second dimensional note and the fifth dimensional note – between the limit of perception and the limit of conceptualization: in medias res, in the midst of cosmic things. Below the second dimensional note there are forms, which transcend consciousness as there are above the fifth dimensional note. But due to the fact that as humans, we normally feel no loss at the lack of perception of the lower two dimensional notes our humanity is not challenged, and we feel more meaningful than “interval-lines” and “instant-points.” We are made of sterner stuff, namely: “succession-plane,” “durance-solid,” “time-solvoid,” “eternity-vosolid.” The three dimensional notes above the fifth, namely “hyparxis-void,” “zeit-raum,” “metatime-metaspace” guarantee that real meaning exists for the human personality. As our consciousness rises through the dimensional notes, our ascension is accompanied by an ever-increasing richness of experience. For the possibility of the ontic richness to stop because the epistemic richness ends is no reason to accept such a proposition that dimensional notes: 6, 7, 8, are to us, of the same nature as dimensional notes one and zero. The bottom two notes are obvious to us, even though they may contain unsuspected mysteries, but the top three notes, while transcending consciousness, as do the lower two, hold out the promise of an ontic richness similar to the beatific vision claimed by Christians. In Christianity, The Beatific Vision is defined as the direct knowledge of God after death by the blessed in heaven and before death by means of mystical experience. In the history of mysticism, meaning is conveyed, it is said, that is neither apparent to the senses nor obvious to the human intelligence. And what is given as content is union or direct communion with God or the ultimate reality. What also is said is the experience of the ultimate reality can never be exhausted by the human consciousness, even in an exalted form. It would seem, therefore, that the human mind will always be placed within range of ultimate meaning because there will always be something unknowable that beckons with its existence. As the major French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre [1905-1980] said of the absurd that it is the condition in which human beings exist. We are all in an irrational and meaningless universe and human life had no ultimate meaning. In fact, the search for order brings the individual in conflict with the universe. As a result, the individual must assume ultimate responsibility for his acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is good or bad. These statements since the mid-twentieth century on the value of the unknowable in the universe have ignored the fact that unknowingness is what draws the human mind forward toward hope and not away from it. Even Sartre, at the end of his life had to agree. In a letter to an old friend, with whom he had studied philosophy, Sartre wrote, “During my whole career with Existentialism, it seems the Holy Spirit was sitting on my shoulder.” XVI In terms of the ontic status of the entire dimensional realm, it is the existential nature of the middle pillar of the system that acts as the repository for the interaction of the various notes of temporality and spatiality. The space-time continuum of Einstein and Minkowski is the model for this interaction, but of course, now in an expanded form. Each note from note zero on up until a final continuity between temporality and spatiality is assured. Then a new dimensional realm can be discovered to exist and so on – note zero represents the completion of a previous dimensional realm, and so on from the indefinite to the indefinite. While the horizontal interaction of each note is symmetric, the vertical interaction is not. And this is because within each dimensional note the human knowledge and the ontic structure is obvious, while vertically they both are cumulative and sequential. The models for the ontic structure of the dimensional realm are those diagrams of natural phenomena such as the table of chemical elements related by date of discovery, atomic weight, atomic structure, and symbol. Of interest, the elements form several natural spectrum [which is the entire range of wavelengths or frequencies of electromagnetic radiation extending from gamma rays to the longest radio waves and including visible light, x-rays, microwaves, infrared, and ultra-violet radiation] is laden with octaves when you consider the interval between any two frequencies that have a ration of 2 to 1. Even those diagrams which summarize the total history of the expansion of the universe relating time units to degrees of temperature advance by natural octaves. XVII In order to represent the natural energy states and subjectivity of temporality, I have selected the traditional Vedic Chakra glyphs that have a natural spiritual progression. In like manner, the octave of spatiality has a pure objectivity that can be best depicted by vibrating spheres of a homogenous liquid each with identical diameters. Because the liquid is confined, the frequency change alters by octaves of octaves. The litany of the dimensional realm is as follows: 0 – instant: point; 1 – interval: line; 2 – succession: plane; 3 – durance: solid; 4 – time: solvoid; 5 – eternity: vosolid; 6 – hyparxis: void; 7 – zeit: raum; 8 – metatime: metaspace. The epistemic ladder, which creates a gradual unity of the dimensional notes, begins with: list: sign; anecdote: index; tale: icon; legend: archtype: myth: symbol; epiphany: cypher; kratophany: cipher; and finally; hierophany: sypher. But the main concern for the human personality is the transition between the fourth and fifth dimensional notes: myth: symbol. This is the location of Utopic Space, which exists as an ontic and epistemic bridge between time and eternity, solvoid vosolid. Utopic space is often defined as the environment for the mystical experience, but this is technically untrue in my dimensional system. The real environment consists epistemically of a total immersion in eternity and vosolid and actually the pressing of the entry into hyparxis and void and onto the pure revelation obtained from epiphany and cypher. XVIII There is a “Family of Forms” that organizes the entire dimensional realm, and it refers to the dimensional notes and their natural numerical vacillations. Many authors who have made reference to dimensional systems could be cited starting, of course, with Pythagoras, but modern writers have positioned the context of this issue in a more understandable way. Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951], engineer, philosopher of language, and mystic [while serving in the Austrian army during World War I underwent a profound mystical experience at the front as a result of reading works by Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy [1828-1910]] wrote in 1933 to 1935 and continued to his death in the Blue and Brown books [preliminary studies for the “”Philosophical Investigation”] about the nature of human language. His insights included that any language instead of having just one purpose, is naturally multi-purposeful and, therefore, cosmic in extent. But rather than supposing you can control the meaning of words in each instance of usage, or expect you can find features in common to every language, all you can really hope for is to find “family resemblances” among a number of instances of usage. Wittgenstein also asked more general questions about language, such as: can there be a private language? Wittgenstein decided that it was not possible on the grounds that language implies some agreement which he called a “form of life,” concerning the use of words. If there truly was a private language, the condition of the “form of life” could never be satisfied. Also, René Guénon [a French Roman Catholic who became converted to the Islamic faith] wrote a book of social criticism in 1947 entitled The Reign of Quantity. Although the book was dismissed at its time, it has proven itself one of the most perceptive of the twentieth century condition and therefore most germane to the subject of dimensionality, which is the language of the universe [a closed system in communication with itself]. If it is true that the nature of reality is an ecstatic outpouring of qualities, allowing history to become simply an unchecked unfolding of the progressive displacement of qualities by various “convenient” quantities, [an example of historicism, in which everything is considered history, and that later stages of history are evaluated in terms of its earlier stages] instead of history being considered a design tool to organize qualities into a system revealing the authentically new, we are going to end up as Lewis Mumford [1895-1990], the modernist architectural historian claimed, moving toward the endgame of a completely dis-qualified universe. The fall into history that began in the eighteenth century away from a total consideration for the aliveness of the universe can only be offset by some version of the so-called Anthropic Principle of Cosmology. The principle states that these are conditions observed in the universe, which must allow the observer of the universe to exist, and the universe must have properties that inevitably result in the existence of intelligent life. This means that the dimensional realm, which I am associating with the traditional concept of fate, is the decoding of The Anthropic Principle of Cosmology, or at least are the logical implications of the formal structure of the dimensional realm. XIX In terms of spatiality, “the family of forms” states that the dimensional notes vacillate between “motion” and “rest.” All the odd-numbered notes involve analogues of the concept “rest”, which we discover first as an experience at note: durance-solid. And all the even-numbered notes are modalities of “motion”, which we become aware of from the vantage of note: time-solvoid. In like manner for temporality, the odd-numbered notes determine “possibility” with durance-solid as the point of entry. The even notes decide “manifestation” with time-solvoid as the autoscope. The content of temporality is energy as the significance of spatiality is position. But again, the definitions of the words “energy” and “position” change from dimensional note to note. As an example, consider the half-note of time. This is the context in which possibilities are manifested in a series of back-to-back non-reversible events. These events are related to the energy system of causality. The ontic structure of causality is: event A causes event B with set of circumstances C, which includes the fact that there exists an abyss of transition between the active cause and the passive effect. Of the total energy transaction the cause exhausts .618… of the unity of energy available for the event while the effect receives .382… of the energy quantum. Because the other half-note is solvoid, this energy is defined and experienced as efficacious with motion. The energy of time was defined in the nineteenth century by such notables as Samuel Taylor Coleridge [1772-1834], Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley [1797-1851], Walt Whitman [1819-1892], Edgar Allan Poe [1804-1849] and Nikola Tesla [1856-1943]. Each in his own way considered electricity as the energy of the motion of life, and therefore, gave us our qualitative definition of time. Anyone who has ever received a mild electric shock has experienced the energy of time, and therefore, the expression of the sublime force of romanticism. In like manner, the half-note of eternity has its own characteristic energy, and that energy is efficacious without motion because the other half-note is volsolid and is defined as rest. This transcendent energy has had many names over human history, such as: Chi, Tumo, Violet Flame, the Holy Spirit, the force of the ring-pass-not, Kundalini, the central stillness, Orgone, etc. This meta-energy is the essence of classicism. The concept of position in relation to dimensionality is actually more complex for spatiality than any of its implications for temporality. Ideas like sychronicity, hyparxis, or synergy may have something to do with position, but the essence of the form is the beginning and the end of the dimensional realm and, therefore, is absolute. Even relativity of motion is based on absolute position. The theory of special relativity by Einstein claims two postulates: 1) the speed of light in a vacuum is constant and independent of the source or observer, and 2) that the mathematical forms of the laws of physics are invariant in all inertial systems and which leads to the assertion of the equivalence of mass and energy and of change in mass, dimension, and time with increased velocity. This means that there exists an indistinguishability of accelerated motion and immersion in a gravitational field, and all observers, regardless of their state of motion, can claim to be at rest [or in a position] as long as they acknowledge the presence of a suitable gravitational field. Being in a position is to assert one’s presence at the highest spiritual level, which can only be done by connecting to the extremities of the entire dimensional realm. It is similar to politically or culturally “knowing” one’s place, or physically discovering your place or “position” in the universe, on the earth, or even in a room. This history of the dimensional point, the ultimate unit of spatiality, is richer even than the instant – the unit of temporality. The point has long been associated with the Greek concept of the atom [a (not) tomas (cut)]. The concept means the primary constituent of reality. The point, therefore, is an abstraction of the atom. This was the insight of Jainism [along with Charvakan skeptical materialism], one of the heterodox systems of Indian philosophy active after 800 B.C.E. The Greek materialists, such as Leucipous and Democritus, in the world of the fifth century B.C.E. declared that atoms are spatial entities not further divisible. Later the Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus [99-55 B.C.E.] recognized the natural motion associated with a point because he endowed the atoms with a voluntary power to swerve [the clinamen atomorum] setting up vortices of points and initiating worlds in the void. Lucretius defined the atoms as being homgeneous, impenetrable, and without internal relationships throughout their extension in space, which becomes as less as it needs to be to become a point. In current physics, the definition of an atom is just at the point of inversing Lucretius’ position so that it is almost completely penetrable, nowhere near being homogeneous and now contains an ever-growing number of internal relationships. In fact, modern physics – especially string theory – has provided what may be the best definition of a point. By trying to add extra quantitative dimensions to the universe in order to make their mathematics work out, the string theorists proposed dimensions that cannot be experienced because they are curled up into a space which is less than Planck’s length – 10-33 centimeters. This is a scale below which quantum fluctuations in the fabric of space-time become enormous, apparently too enormous to discover anything by instrumentality. This “quantum foam: is said to contain billions and billions of Planck-length diameter spheres, which house six dimensions – so they are not exactly spheres, but Calabi-Yau shapes. These spaces are real three-dimensional slices through fifth degree hyper-surfaces embedded in complex projective four-spaces. Disregarding for the moment the contradiction that Calabi-Yau spaces are “inside” normal observable three-space, they are the best models for active points. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Alchemy of Breathing, 1992 Serigraph, 30 ink on paper 20 x 27 in. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) It Came from Beneath Space, 1993 Oil, Acrylic, Ink, lettering on Canvas 61 1/2 x 98 1/2 in. Subject: Belmont, Massachusetts Transposed to Belmont, California Symbol Evocation: The Inverse of the Miracle Comments: This depicts my 52nd lucid dream. The painting is in the form of a Golden Rectangle, which is then subdivided into eight squares that diminish logarithmically (the so-called whirling squares of Phi). Phi is the general concept that unites such elements as (1) the Golden Rectangle, (2) the Golden Proportions .382…/.618…, (3) the logarithmic spiral observed in nature, and (4) the Fibonacci number series: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55,…etc, also observed in nature. Phi is the principle of continuity of life and death in nature. The largest square to the left is the actual subject matter of my lucid dream (lucid dreaming means being aware of the fact that you are dreaming while you are dreaming). The subject is about my mother and our family home in Belmont, Massachusetts, eight (the 7th Fibonacci number) miles west of Boston, that has been transposed to Belmont, California twenty-one (the 9th Fibonacci number) miles southeast of San Francisco. The transposing agent was a single out-take I once saw from the science-fiction horror movie, It Came from beneath the Sea (1955) in which an enraged mutant octopus is so large that it believes it can pull down the Golden Gate Bridge. Even though this dream is ostensibly about my mother, the date of the dream is December 20th- my father's birthday. The remaining seven squares to the right are concerned with the theory of lucid dreaming as an aspect of mind-physics (which describes the continuity between the subjective and the objective-consciousness and mass in nature). Ontologically lucid dreaming is the inverse of the concept of the miracle. In lucid dreaming the will so strengthens the ego, that the ego is able to violate the natural order (the waking state) and draw some contents of the subconscious into manifestation (a tulpa) or a degree of embodiment. In contrast, a miracle (such as the spontaneous healing of the body) is defined as the will so weakening the ego, that the ego is able to violate the natural order (the waking state) by withdrawing into the subconscious as a timeless state of pure revelation. I recently have begun to read The Enneads of the New-Platonic philosopher/mystic Plotinus (AD 204-270) and realized that the second largest square in the painting which I have entitled The Totality of Existence is Absolute is a diagrammatic cognate of Plotinus' system of divinity seen as a graded triad: (1) The One, or the first existent, (2) The Divine Mind, or the Nous or Logos, and repository of the Platonic forms, and (3) The All-Soul, or the first and only principle of life. My diagram was an attempt to place lucid dreaming within the largest context possible, subsuming what I believed to be the systems of Plato, Shankara, Sogaku Marada, Freud and Jung (all seminal philosophers of the mind) and I fell right into the open hands of Plotinus. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Xanatopia, 1995 Ink, Gouache, Handset Lettering, Collage on Board 30 x 30 inches Subject: The Utopic Space of Xanadu Homage to: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834) Symbol Evocation: It is my contention that Coleridge was attempting to express unconsciously aspects of utopic space during the lucid-dream composition of his poem: Kubla Khan: Or a Vision in a Dream. Comments: Now totally under the spell of William Godwin (1756 - 1836) (the father of political anarchism), Coleridge at 21 returns to Jesus College, Cambridge in April. On a walking tour he meets the poet Robert Southey (1774 - 1843), then 20 and studying at Oxford. Together they plan a utopian community in the New World. The specific site is to be an island in the Susquehanna River. In 1797, between July 4 (the 21st anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States) and July 14 (the 8th anniversary of the Fall of the Bastille - the beginning of the French Revolution), Coleridge writes Kubla Khan, or more correctly the poem is presented to him in a totality (an esemplastic event) in a 3 hour dream. His dream would be called today a lucid dream -- where the dreamer is aware of the fact that he or she is dreaming. As an inveterate "armchair traveler" Coleridge happened to be reading Pilgrimage and Pilgrims by Samuel Purchas (ca 1577 - 1626), an English compiler of travel books, when he came across the sentence "here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden there unto: and thus ten miles of fertile ground where inclosed with a wall." At that moment he fell into a deep sleep and instantly began to dream in the most vivid manner. He endured "forced rem cycle" induced no doubt by a combination of his normal dosage of opium plus a prescribed anodyne (alcohol, ether and ethereal oil - a distillate of alcohol and sulfuric acid). When he awoke he had enough dream material for a poem of 300 lines all pre-composed for him" "If that can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort". Immediately he began to write but was interrupted for an hour by someone from Porlock on business. When he returned to his transcription he realized that he had lost from his waking memory all but the concept of his vision and the few lines that form the famous fragment. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Thanaton, 1996 Ink, Lettering, Acrylic on Board 23 x 23 in. Subject: My Personal UFO Encounters Symbol Evocation: Our Natural Alienhood Comments: Over all the years that I have been involved with UFOlogy, in terms of my reading, what has happened to me personally, and the meeting of others with similar experiences; the only conclusions I can draw are that we are not alone in the universe and that life as we know it did not have its origin on our planet Earth. In these conclusions I agree with many, but I know that I am in disagreement with many more who hold that life occurred "creatio ex-nihilo" by God, or that life here on Earth and anywhere else in the universe evolved from simpler non-life planetary materials. The theory of abiogenesis (the spontaneous generation of living organisms directly from lifeless matter), whether in the form of "Creationism," "Vitalism," or "Darwinism," demonstrates to me a paucity of imagination in relation to the disciplines of the theology, magic and science, which I believe are richer than that. The evidence for such a proposition comes from what could be called the more "urban parts" of the universe. The message is delivered by means of the logarithmic spiral, the most cosmic and random of forms. The spiral, defined by the mathematical expression ? or Phi the ratio of Pheidias, the Golden Section, the Divine Proportion, which is (1+ √5)/ 2 (= 1.618) or (.382/.618…), or the Fibonacki series divided by itself. This heartbeat of sacred geometry occurs in the structure of plant forms, the human body, animal horns, the periodicity of atomic elements and nebulae of interstellar space. The message is death because Phi flowers only in the maturity of any species as a prelude to death. Thus the secret of life lies not in life itself but in death. This message has been imprinted in one of our earliest artifacts, the classical form of the great pyramid of Cheops in the Giza Necropolis (which uses Phi in numerous ways), and also in one of our most recent artifacts, the new classical from of the flying saucer. The imperative for us who wish to know the nature of life is to create a permanent reciprocal link between life and death-- a final imitation of Christ. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Time of the Light: The Bauharoque: 2000-2014 AD, 1997 Ink, lettering, collage on Acid Free Board 40 x 32 in. Subject: The Nature of Time- Space after the existence of the Time Machine: 2013 AD Symbol Evocation: Evocation: Unbridled Futurism Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Time of the Light: The Bauharoque: 2000-2014 AD, 1997 Ink, lettering, collage on Acid Free Board 40 x 32 in. Subject: The Nature of Space-Time after the existence of the Space Machine (Perpetual motion: 2063 AD) Symbol Evocation: Unbridled Repression Comments: The Bauharoque began at the turn of the second millennium AD and provided the world with a hundred years of the most exciting challenges and solutions the human race has ever known. Nevertheless, one thing is for certain: the Bauharoque ended for all time the genre known as science fiction that had been popular during the Modernist period. The Bauharoque began, not surprisingly with a complete and literal rejection of the impotent cynicism of Post-Modernism. It directed its initial volley straight at the very heart of what Post-Modernists considered their forte: fashions and fads, a concern for the nature of time and a taste for historicism. This happened in 1995 at the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, where someone demonstrated the first successful time machine as an object-device. Because of the nature of the time machine and the space machine (perpetual motion), for 100 years instrumentality exceeded the ability of the human imagination (even when artificially enhanced) to comprehend their true nature and circumstantial implications. Eventually the blinding ecstasy of the time of the light had to be extinguished by the time of the dark. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Das Urpflanzehaus, 1997 Ink, Lettering, Collage, Acrylic on Board 30 1/2 x 30 1/2 in. Subject: The Vegetable-House as the Answer to Low Cost Housing Symbol Evocation: The Apotheosis of Being in Pauperis Comments: The modern movement in architecture is based primarily upon the utopian solution to the most basic of building types: mass-housing. As we enter the Bauharoque Period with its bulging populations, unwinable wars, the degrading of the world environment, and gradual increase in poverty level life styles, what could be more plausible than having the world housing shortage ended by simply sowing genetically altered seeds so that houses could be grown almost anywhere on the surface of the earth, with a growing time of approximately two months. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Das Urpflanze Haus II, 1981-97 Model: natural materials, plastics, model-making materials, paints, drafting film, accompanied by a museum case with Plexiglas top 60 x 48 x 96 in. Subject: A House Created by Grafting together Various Forms of Vegetation Symbol Evocation: The Primordial Plant-Form of the poet Goethe Comments: The secret to grafting and growing Das Urpflanze Haus to a mature and seeded state is the Ginko Bilboa or Maidenhair Tree. Native to China it tolerates all climates and soils. It was saved from extinction in the 19th century by certain Chinese Monasteries. The tree dates from the Mesozoic Era (144 million years ago) making it the oldest flowering plant alive at the time of the dinosaurs. Shoots of the tree can connect deciduous to conifer trees, fruits to vegetables, grasses to vines. The Ginko Bilboa tree is not subject to the divine proportion (.382…/.618…), the proportion of death. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Solitron, 1997 Oil, Acrylic, Ink, Lettering on Canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: A Design for a Perpetual Motion Device Symbol Evocation: The Natural Abundance of the Universe Comments: The Solitron is a design for producing perpetual motion. As an object itself (a painting), the Solitron is in the tradition of American abstract painting, especially similar to the visual structure of the later work of the Adolph Gottlieb. That is, it is a "solid surface" of flat color that avoids both schematic two-dimensionality and the full three-dimensional spatiality that a free manual touch engenders. Also the design is psychotronic (a mass-consciousness interactive) device, which can be efficacious in a two-dimensional or a three-dimensional modality. The Solitron makes use of the natural motion properties of the correctly generated solitron wave (which retains its velocity and form during energy encounters) in conjunction with the mass-consciousness unifying capacity of lucid dreaming. I The basic definition of perpetual motion is an objective process that does more work than the amount of energy you put into it; the output is greater that the input. Perpetual motion occurs in three classes: (in order of difficulty) 1) The creation of energy 2) The reversal of entropy 3) The elimination of friction In essence perpetual motion (although it is a lot older as a concept) attacks the Nineteenth Century vision of science that is implicit in the writings of Sadi-Nicolas-Leonard Carnot (1796-1832), a French military engineer. His book Reflexions sur La Puissance Motrice du Feu (Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire), published in 1824, when he was 28, is a meditation on the work of the Scottish engineer James Watt (1736-1819) who in 1865 produced the first efficient steam engine. The now famous Carnot Cycle of the ideal heat engine (with its four isothermal, adiabatic, expanse-compression stages) set the cultural stage for the current image of science (that of conservative skepticism) expressed by the framing of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics: First Law: Energy can change from form to form, but cannot be created. Second Law: Entropy always increases. Third Law: Every use of energy results in some loss due to friction. The acceptance of these laws was so pervasive in the Nineteenth Century (regardless of the rise of science fiction in 1848 with the publication of Eureka: A Prose Poem by Edgar Allan Poe), that by 1896 the United States Patent Office made a ruling that it would no longer accept applications for perpetual motion machines unless accompanied by a working model. The officials at the patent office believed that all the perpetual motion concepts could not be "useful" or could not operate because of the intention of the inventors, which for the goal of perpetual motion have always been the attempt to: 1) create energy 2) find a free source of energy 3) eliminate friction so there is no waste of energy 4) eliminate the wearing out of parts of the infrastructure of potential perpetual motion machines This is the current state of the clash of beliefs concerning the existence of perpetual motion. II But the initial attack on the concept of perpetual motion was launched by the High Gothic artist-scientist, Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519) who wished to turn his back, like the painter Masaccio (1401-1428), on anything that even hinted at the medieval and look forward to a particular future, which became, for them, the Italian Renaissance. no description available Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Tree of Sephiroth, 1998-99 Mixed Medias on Rag Board Eleven parts: Each: 30 x 30 in. Subject: The ten globes of absolute light of the tree of the Sephiroth and the false eleventh Sephirah named Daath (or knowledge) which spans the Abyss of Transition. Symbol Evocation: The Source of Traditional Western Magic Comments: The Kabbalah is the most continuously sustained tradition of western mysticism. Mysticism is a unique experiment with meditation as an invariant structure of ritual. Mysticism functions within the ritual in order to conduct one's mental experiments. The goal of meditation is to produce a union between the variable objects of consciousness and the invariant nature of consciousness so that transcendent knowledge can come through to the mind. Magic (or sympathetic magic) is the belief that any object of consciousness can be affected by: naming, numbering, lettering, geometrizing or otherwise symbolically representing these objects by means of analogy. In doing so, it is held that certain states of consciousness are induced in the mind by degrees which then transcend the realm of phenomena and transport the soul back into the unity of the cosmos. From Hebrew kabbalah means "the received collections" or "traditional collections," but alchemy (traditional Western magic) denotes "the Prophets" and "the Hagiographs" as opposed to "the Pentateuch." The Kabbalah's origins are from the final pre-centuries before the common era through the fourteenth century. Although it has continued to develop to the present day and always in contrast to orthodox Jewish doctrine, it survives without loss of continuity. Besides the great deal of interest it has always engendered in non-Jewish students of the tradition, it is now considered under the province and protection of the Hasidim rather than the Talmudists, because of its theologically esoteric nature. The Kabbalah resides theologically not in "the Law" taught to all the children of Israel, nor in "the Soul of the Law" revealed to the rabbins and teachers, but in "the Soul of the Soul of the Law." Therefore, only the highest initiates among the Jews were instructed in its secret principles, which often take a lifetime to learn, beginning after one's 40th year. Eventually the insular communities that emerged around these initiates (Tsaddik or saintly mentors) became the source of the present day Hasidic movement within which devotion to the study of the Kabbalah is complete. My interest, as a non-Jew and an artist, in the Kabbalah derives from my lifetime study of the Occult in general. Specifically my interest derives from my reading of authors such as Manly P. Hall, Aleister Crowley, and Israel Regarde (Crowley's secretary for a number of years) and discovering that many artists of the 1920's (like Marcel Duchamp) were self-initiates in the Kabbalah. My entry point of study will not be the alpha numeric codes associated with the Kabbalah-- the Gematria, the Notariqon, or the Temurah-- but the major diagram of the divine emanation-- the Tree of Sephiroth (the ten globes of Absolute Light connected by 22 paths). Even more specifically I will concentrate on each of the globes (or Sephirah). They are almost the complete cognates of higher dimensions of space and time that we might read of in contemporary physics. There is a little known tradition in the study of the Kabbalah that as you move up the Tree of Sephiroth from Malkus (10) to Keser (1) in your meditation on each globe (of your own diagram), you are required to place a spot of your own blood in the center of that Sephirah to indicate that you have successfully united (at that level) Spirit with Matter, and thereby released another aspect of your Soul into the unity of the God-Head. I plan to follow this tradition. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Tree of Sephirot - YESOD, 1998 - 1999 Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Tree of Sephirot - HOD, 1998-99 Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Tree of Sephirot - NETZACH, 1998-99 Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Tree of Sephirot - TIPHARETH, 1998-99 Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Tree of Sephirot - GEBURAH, 1998-99 Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Tree of Sephirot - CHESED, 1998-99 Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Tree of Sephirot - BINAH, 1998-99 Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Tree of Sephirot - CHOKMAH, 1998-99 Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Tree of Sephirot - KETHER, 1998-99 Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) DAATH [eleventh of eleven], 2001 Acrylic paint, India ink, blood, and letters on acid free board 30 x 30 inches Comments: Daath is called The Empty Sephirah and is located on the Middle Pillar of The Tree of Life between KETHER [The Crown] and TIPHARETH. DAATH means Gnosis or knowledge obtained by entering The Abyss. In contemporary physics DAATH is comparable to the infamous BLACK HOLE – the Abyss of Transition to another world. It represents the digit 0 [nothing] , as opposed to the number 10. To pass through the DAATH is as treacherous for the Soul as passing through a blac k hole would be for the body. In terms of the cosmology of the QABALAH [which is similar to that of the Ptolemaic System] it consists of forty nested worlds divided into four sets of ten worlds. /The transition from one system to another is represented as a DAATH – the absence of a Sephirah. The four worlds are : 1. ATZILUTH – the boundless world of emanations 2.BRIAH – the archangelic world of creations 3. YETZIRAH – the hierarchal world of formations 4.ASSIAH – the physical world of substance or action It is the nature of these worlds to interpenetrate each other making three DAATH, but the final DAATH contains the QLIPHOTH – the evil entities sometimes called shells or demons. DAATH are , therefore, the inverse of SEPHIRAHJ. The blood spot in the center of DAATH as a diagram is obtained by making a quick knife slash to your throat. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) THE WRITINGS OF JESUS CHRIST, 2000 India ink, sand, letters, color pencils, collaged materials on board 30 x 40 in. Comments: In the Gospel according to Saint John, Chapter 8, Verses 1 to 11, some Scribes and Pharisees bring forward a woman who has been caught in the act of adultery. They presented her to Jesus, saying in a sarcastic manner: “Teacher, this woman is an adulteress. According to The Law of Moses , we must stone such women to death. Now what do you say ?” They were trying to trap him into an occasion of blasphemy. Instead of responding verbally at first, Jesus bent down on one knee and wrote on the sandy ground with his forefinger. The Pharisees kept on with their questions, but Jesus remained mute. Eventually he rose up and spoke : “He who is without sin cast the first stone”. Then he bent down again to write a second time on the sand. One by one the accusers of the woman began to skulk away, beginning with the oldest at the rear of the crowd. Soon the woman finds herself alone in open square with the kneeling Jesus. She stands there shaking in fear. Jesus rises again and asks her in a gentle manner : “Where have all your accusers gone ? Knowing , of course, what happened, he then dismisses her with the exhortation : “Go and sin no more”. Obvious questions arise. What did he write ? Why did he write ? And why twice ? Since there can be no diseconomies of action in The Divine Realm, he must have been doing something beyond a simple exercise in the annoyance of others or as a personal diversion. I believe, he was actually hinting at The Cosmic Task for The Human Future. THE HOLY SPIRIT [ The Principle of Ordered Freedom – The Magen David (The Shield of David)] that hovered over the waters of The Earth, [ in The Book of Genesis], entered The Hypostatic Unionized Soul of Jesus, and The Divine Power was transferred by Him into The Cross of The Earth, in order to give The Earth the means once again become EDEN , and act as an Edenic Model for The Entire Physical Universe. In our own time the Writings of Jesus have been echoed in the sky on January 23, 1997 at 12:35 P.M. over New York City a Planetary Magen David formed This is what Jesus wrote first. The sign of The Holy Spirit occurred in the astrological signs of Sagittarius, Libra, Leo, Gemini, Aries, and a satellitium [that is 3 or more planets in conjunction in one house], in Aquarius – as in the dawning of the age of… On August 11, 1999 at 10:53 P.M. over London the planets lined up in a Fixed Grand Cross [ the second writing of Jesus in which he predicts his own death] in the signs of Aquarius, Leo, Taurus and Scorpio [the symbols in astrology for the Four Evangelists : Matthew, Mark, Luke and John].This , to me , is The Cosmic Indication of the beginning of The Bauharoque, the cultural phase succeeding Post-Modernism. The temporal transition was completed on May 5, 2000. Seen major planets lined up behind the Sun in the sign of Taurus [ the sign of The Earth] in the 10th House [the House of Honors}.This is the fulfillment of the prophesy made by Saint John The Divine in The Book Of Revelation : Chapter 21, Verse 1 : “ And I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth and the First Earth passed away, and the sea is no more “. The reference to the sea is not that the waters of The Earth dried up , but that the sea [ symbolizing at that time the barrier to communication and easy travel across the Earth] is no longer effective. And the preparation for the coming the Holy City –The New Jerusalem- is at an end. Then Eden will exist once more. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Hieronymous Box Two, 1999-2003 Serigraph inks, aluminum, gold & copper wire, mahogany, blood, glass No. 4 from an Edition of 6 25 x 25 x 3 in. Notes: This is a psychotronic device (a mind-matter interactive system), otherwise known as a “radionic”, “radiesthesia”, “Dowsing” instrument. This present invention derives from the work of the American inventor Thomas Galen Hieronymus, who obtained the first United States patent for a psychotronic device on September 27, 1946. Later, January 2, 1952 he received a British patent. The title of his patent is: “The detection of emanations from materials and measurement of the volumes therof.” The wording of the patent specifications was such that it attempted to disguise its real intent: The patenting of a magical charm: (A) an amulet- a protection against its real evil forces; or (B) a talisman- an object possessing specific supernatural capacities that can direct consciousness in a specific direction and at a specific time to either harm of help another entity. The parts of the name are: (1) anthe= exerting energy in the opposite direction; (2) hieronymusbox= a not so veiled reference (pun) to Hieronymus Bosch (1474-1516) the German painter of panel pictures both large and small showing gruesome and threatening scenes of nightmare worlds in lurid color effects. Although this is literally an “electronic VooDoo Doll”, it works by means of Eye Energy and Touch Energy of the operator through a Two-Dimensional System of components. The various shapes and colors act as attractors and inhibitors of visual energy (energy that is efficacious without motion). Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The World Soul of Plotinus, 2001 Oil, acrylic and lettering on canvas 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Subject: The Source of New-Platonism Symbol Evocation: Transcendent Evolution Comments: Plotinus was born on March 13, 207 AD, at Lycoplos Eypt. In 212 he was weaned at 8 years old. In 231, he had a late start in philosophy, but he then dedicates himself to philosophy as mysticism. In 232, he joins the school of Ammonium Saccas. Plotinus remains with Saccas 11 years. In 243 Plotinus tries to reach Persian and Hindu sages by joining the army of Gordian (who is killed), Plotinus escapes with his life. By 244 Plotinus arrives in Rome. He teaches but writes nothing. He practices astral projection through the Oculus of the Pantheon designed by Hadrian the 14th Emperor of Rome. The geometry of the Pantheon with its implied interior perfect sphere inspires Plotinus to his mystical system. He then begins to write about the system, which is very simple. It is a system of necessary emanation, procession, irradiation accompanied by necessary aspiration or reversion-to-source: all the forms and phases of existence flow from the divinity and all strive to return. The divinity is a graded triad of hypostases: 1) The One, or first existent. 2) The Divide Mind (nous-logos or the forms) or the first thinker and thought. 3) The All Soul or the first and only principle of life in which the body is described as a system of consciousness and matter and is to be considered distinct from the soul. The simple teachings and practices were formed in 54 essays between 253 and 269. In 268 Porphyry of Tyre arrives from Athens to become the major disciple of Plotinus. After Plotinus dies Plotinus arranges the 54 essays into 6 groups and 9. This is why they are called the enneads. Porphyry just thought his arrangement was a good idea at the time. In 269 Plotinus becomes ill but he had already moved Campania into a small town called Belmonte, where in 266 he tried to build his dream—a city dedicated to Plato, “Platonopolis,” based on magnesia the ideal city referred to in Plato’s last dialogue “the Laws.” The whole think fell through. Plotinus died on November 26, 270 from quinsy. That is all that is known about him except to say that his mystical system is totally unique in history. Many religions from Christianity to Hinduism have tried to claim Plotinus—it is impossible. His interest in religious traditions was from a position of attempting to discover how close these other systems were to his. A final note: In 1946 Giuseppe Conti, who lived in Belmonte, Italy accidentally discovered the skull of Plotinus while digging a post- hole. The skull was neatly severed as if by a surgeon. Plotinus always said he hated his body and wished only his head buried. In the same year, Conti saw his first flying saucer—Disco Volante). Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Gaudeamus Igitur (let us then be merry, let us therefore rejoice), 2001 Ink, Letters, Collage on Board 15 7/8 x 15 7/8 in. Homage to: Antonio Gaudi y Cornet ( 1852-1924) visionary architect Comments: In 1908 the great Catalonian architect Antonio Gaudi was retained to design a grand hotel for New York City. The location chosen was the site upon which the Twin-Towered World Trade Center would be eventually built between 1962 and 1974. This American patron of Gaudi was an extremely affluent financier who actually owned the land bounded on the north by Vesey Street, on the source by Liberty Street, on the east by Church Street, and on the west by West Street (which later became connected with the west side highway). Of course, at the beginning of the 20th century the financier’s actual landholdings were not as sharply defined by streets as the world trade center would become. Then the lower west side of Manhattan was zoned for low residential and light commercial such as shops that sold parts for wireless telegraphy and crystal sets. How the landowner came to believe he could obtain a zoning variance that would allow him to build what would have been the first really skyscraper for New York City remains only one of the many mysteries surrounding this project. Perhaps it was the fact that the American architect Cass Gilbert (1959-1934) had just finish a modest size gothic skyscraper on West Street (1905-1907) built on Broadway near City Hall Park. That became the financier’s impetus. At first, Gaudi was extremely enthusiastic to be part of the American Dream to such an extent that he feel destined to design the hotel. He made some preliminary sketches of a structure reaching to a height of 1016 feet composed of clustered catenary formed parabolic towers of varying heights grouped together like engaged columns around a central soaring shaft. But somehow the sketch plans never progressed to the design development stage. The only possible explication for this situation is Gaudi’s method of working which he developed in Spain. From the simplest drawing he would begin construction like a master sculptor, collaborating with other designers more than him in working drawings and specifications. Acted like a conductor of an orchestra of architects and artists, as was the case his ongoing master piece the incredible expiatory church of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Gaudi planed to travel to New York City to oversee the construction of the hotel with its huge halls, balconies and the decoration he would improvise from debris discovered on the New York City streets. He was hoping to hire, as he did in Catalonia, an army of artists and architects. In this case from New York to bring the interior and exterior detailing of his fantastic vision to fruition. Another mystery was why Gaudi’s journey to New York was abruptly cancelled, and the project stopped with no reason given. The site remained unchanged until the early 1960’s. While the reasons of the abandonment of the project remain the ultimate enigma of this enterprise, it might be safe to surmise that the vision of Gaudi was ahead of its time. What remains of this project today are a few sketches by Gaudi’s own hand and more fully developed rendering by Juan Matamala y Flotats (1893-1968) the son of Leandro Matamala y Pinyol (1856-9127). Gaudi’s prime sculptor and “right arm”. Juan, also one Gaudi’s sculptors, created his drawings from memory in the 1940’s because as tell us “…Nothing is left now of the Gaudi’s studio: the studio, the casting, the archives, everything was burnt during the 1936 Civil War…” This was that catapulted the fascist director Fransisco Franco (1892-1975) to power in Spain. What Juan had done was to begin the process of improvisation upon a very strong vision, a modus operandi so dear to Gaudi’s medieval sensibilities. Gaudi always knew that real architecture requires a group effort to bring a building to successful completion. Personal involvement in a project by others is ensured more by an invitation to become co-creators, rather than proceeding in the normal way of doing things, that is having a dictator assign a multitude of mindless and mechanical tasks to a mass of underlings. This assessment of Gaudi’s working method was first suggested by the contemporary architectural historian Georges R. Collins in a chapter he wrote about The American Hotel in a book entitled: “La vision artistique et religieuse de Gaudi” (1969). Until his recent death, (Juan) Matamala was Gaudi’s most active spokesman. It was he who, with passionate enthusiasm, convinced us of the exceptional importance of The American Project, and who enable us to devote a chapter to it here. His fervent devotion to Gaudi’s legacy enabled us to imagine the prodigious influence the artist exercised over the man who surrounded him. Thus, if in certain of the plans for the American Hotel, the vision of Juan Matamala seems rather obvious, we can be assured that the remained faithful to Gaudi’s creative spirit. Gaudi’s concept of the American Dream include not only the melting pot of all races, religions, ethic groups and classes, but also the nexus of multi-opportunity to most Europeans at the turn of the 20th Century this idea translated in terms of architecture into the 18th Century vision of the utopian city. New York City, nevertheless, had by itself bypassed this image of utopic space with any conscious effort. Edward Bellamy (1850-1898), born in Chicopee Massachusetts wrote in 1887 a very influential future vision of the city of Boston in the Year 2000. But the Manhattan of 1908 made this book purporting to reveal modern life 113 ahead totally obsolete as the artists and architects of Italian Futurism discovered. Thus Bellamy’s book “looking backward: 2000-1887” turned out to be ironically correctly titled. From 1900 on those American who were Gotham Bound from other parts of the United States would seek utopic space not in the city itself but in its hotels. These were (and are) worlds of their own, The forerunners of the mega structure and multi-use architectural proposals of 1970’s. And now these hotels are often the only manifestations of this thinking that remain. One can only imagine the mixture of joy and envy Gaudi must have felt while reading about existing hotels in New York City as part of his research for the project. This must have been especially true when he read the description of the most famous hotel in Manhattan at that time, the original Waldorf Astoria. It was located in 1908 on the site of the present Empire State Building, on Fifth Avenue between 34th and 33th Streets. The hotel was designed in 1893 by Henry J. Hardenbergh, architect, then demolished in 1929. During the early 1930’s the current Art Deco version of the Waldorf was built on Park Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets and backed by Lexington Avenue. But the original Waldorf was owned by colonel John Jacob Astor. As a result, the hotel became one of the gathering places of the New York 400 besides Madison Square Garden. But unlike the Garden which was an exclusive club, the Waldorf was open to the public day and night. The Hoi Polloi, therefore, were able to mingle with the elite in the lobbies, ballrooms, concert Halls, the Theatres, the banks that had up to the minute contact with the stock exchange downtown. The huge dining rooms, the various shop, the mezzanine where a full orchestra played from morning to night, the Lavis Corridors and the open air restaurant in the summer which was the 17th floor and the roof of the hotel. It was only on the 1500 rooms and 1200 baths where one could find complete privacy, the rest of the structure was free for examination. It must have seemed to its patron and visitors as if they had entered in live-in museum where all the interior accoutrement was either selected or made by the best symbolized immigrants by the Statue of Liberty was seen up close and realized by the Waldorf. To the people who entered this world, it became a visit to the end of the proverbial rainbow complete with privilege, urbanity and culture.As an example of the drawing power of opportunity base on this hotel, one need only to be remind of a famous immigrant to American soil Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), the electrical genius who literally created the 20th Century. He arrived from Croatia to the Castle Garden Immigration Office in Manhattan. It was 1884, the year the people of France presented the United States with the Statue of Liberty. Tesla had with him twenty-five cents American and a letter of recommendation to the American inventor Thomas Alua Edison (1847-1931). When the inevitable rift occurred between these two promethean inventors, Tesla began to frequent the fabulous Palm Room at Waldorf. It was here he would eat and mingle with the giants of American industry in hope of finding the venture capital to launch an independent career. Eventually, he did as soon as his personal situation improved, he began to take up residence at the Waldorf. Of all the strange twists and turns and turns his long career took, Tesla admitted at the end of his life there were only two things that gave him the hope he needed to fulfill his dreams, his American citizenship and the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. For Gaudi, it was the hotel with which he wished to complete not America itself. If he could but capture the attention of New York with a hotel so physically large, so grand in accommodation, so lavish in décor that he would surpass all existing designs, even future attempts, but not like the traditional European palace which attracts and expresses the class system and the unobtainable , or the cold uncaring bureaucratic building which repels and is simply a wall against the masses, he would have fulfilled his task. What Gaudi designed was a building that was eight feet less than the height of the Eiffel Tower on Paris , in terms of the basic structure. But with the addition of the observatory he called “ the sphere of all space”. It added another 62 feet making the entire height of the grand hotel 1086 feet, making it 282 feet less in height than the World Trade Center. Directly under the space tower, Gaudi planned an enormous exhibition hall of 375 feet of vertical space. It would have been as height as the tower of the Sagrada Familia. The space boasted a first and second circumferential gallery both interior and exterior. The space was to be lit by huge stain glass windows. The hall was supposed to contain giants statues of all the presidents of the United States with enough pedestals remaining to take America into the third millennium. Below the hall was to be a monster theater and lecture room 100 feet high utilizing both amphitheater and proscenium staging. Immediately below that was to be a 30 foot high room to display the intricacies of the structure of the building which was to involve double layer reinforced concrete shells, steel columns, and compressive catenary generated forms. After that were to be a series of six dining room 50 to 60 feet in height, they would be able to accommodate at least 400 hundred people at once. While they dined they would have been able to hear the sounds of full symphony orchestras. With a capacity of 2400 patrons, it is unlikely that anyone would be denied seating. The ceiling were to have mythological themes representing the galaxies. If the hotel were built today the ceiling of the dining rooms would undoubtedly be decorated with the spectacular imagery universe obtained from the Hubble space telescope. Five of the rooms were to have wall décor symbolizing the five continents of the earth: Asia, Africa, Oceania, Europe and America. On the entrance level one would have experienced a lobby and reception rooms varying in height from 80 to 100 feet. The actual hotel rooms would have been confined to the smaller paraboloid structures that nestle around the gigantic main shaft like children around their mother. The exterior of the building was to be sheathed primarily in alabaster, giving it a pearlescent luster, along with some of its forms being accented in different colored marbles and carved granite at the lobby level. Finally the surfaced was to be bejeweled with bits of building debris, terra cotta sculptures, minerals fragments of glass and tiles. This very late style of continental gothic, the Flamboyant, was to be illuminated at night the way most New York City buildings are today. The final mystery concerning the project involves the suicidal attack on the Twin Towered World Trade Center by terrorists in September 2001. Why they destroyed the towers and murdered thousands of innocent civilians and service people going about their daily tasks is: on the one hand, an act of envy by those who have experienced the American Dream up close and realized that the Twin Towers are the icon of what they covet; and on the other hand, the particular day. The eleventh of September is the birthday of Christ, the most hated day of all by the terrorists. Current scholarship, combining history and archaeology with astronomy and computer astrology has determined the birth of Christ to be September 11, 3 b.c.e. And according to numerologists eleven gives warning off hidden dangers, trial, and treachery from others. The architect Yamasaki, who was afraid of heights, built the world’s tallest eleven into the New York City skyline. The first airplane to strike the north tower was American Airline flight 11. The second plane , united American Airline flight 175 ( added numerologically it equals 13 the number of up heaval and destruction) crashes into the south tower and is the first to collapse. 23 minutes later her sister the north collapses also. The resulting image of the ragged head of rubble at ground zero reminds one of the same fate of one of Yamasakis’ earlier buildings, the Prutt-I Goe public housing project of St Louis, Missouri (1950 1958). Only on this case the destruction was international due to the project’s negative social impact on its neighborhood. According to the self styled apologist of post modernism , architect Charles A. Jencks, the dynamiting of the Prutt-I Goe building on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 pm central daylight time worked the official ending of the heroic phase of modernism and the ushering in of postmodernism. In like manner the beginning of the third phase of modernism , sometimes called post- post-modernism, transmodernism, neo-modernism, or the Bauharogue can, in my opinion, be marked by the ironic symmetry of this architectural and personal tragedy of September eleven, 2001 at 8:45 to 9:03 am eastern daylight saving time. This phase of modernism will be characterized by the utopian impulse of the Bauhaus School united with the theatricality of the baroque. Historically it will transcend science-fiction. Time travel will occur and all instrumentality will be actual living structures. Now that ground zero is but a gaping wound on the body of New York City and on the soul of America, many have speculated as to what to do with the violent laceration of our nation. I believe one thing is clear, anything that is placed there to begin the healing process can not proceed from the same living ego impulse that motivated Minoru Yamasaki (1912-1986). That is why I feel Gaudi’s Grand Hotel would be the appropriate solution: First, the Hotel was planned there in 1903; Second, Gaudi has been dead for 75 years, Third, the Hotel would function as a celebration of life for which New York City is famous; Fourth, it could act as a permanent memorial for all those who lost their lives in the disaster; And fifth, it would take the combined efforts of the entire artistic and architectural communities of New York City and other areas to bring the building into being. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) On Becoming a Shadow, 2001-2002 Oil, Acrylic and Lettering on Canvas 37 3/4 x 37 3/4 in. Comments: When I was growing up in Belmont Massachusetts (a sleepy little bedroom dormitory just outside of Boston) in the 1940’s, I would listen faithfully to “my programs.” These, of course, were commercially broadcast radio programs (amplitude modulation), the dominant form of entertainment of America until the advent of commercial television in the 1950’s. Part of the interest in “my programs” was due to the fact that I made “my own radio sets”- crystal sets that is. As Broadcast detectors I used such minerals as zincite, anglesite, arsenic, bornite, cadmium sulfide, carborundum, cerussite, chalcopyrites, galena, and iron pyrites. Also I tried using one of my father’s discarded Gillette Blue razor blades and a length of pencil graphite. The look of the simple circuitry of wires, capacitors, resistors, etc. and of course, the pie?ce de re?sistance- the hand wound inductance solenoidal coil made of 300 turns of number 18 gauge copper wire carefully patinated with two coats of ruby red transparent varnish- all gleaming and sparkling from the light of a single bulb that graced that part of the basement of our house that was “my workshop,” created an impression on my mind of total allure and complete possession of whatever came through the earphones. “My programs,” therefore could be completely separated form “the adult programs” that entered our house via the large Philco Console fourth generation superheterodyne. I did not feel that sense of “crystal-set covert technology” again until I saw and experienced psychotronic instrumentality for the first time. As a preteen I had no interest in what engrossed my parents such as the lyric nonsense of Jack Benny as he described the lives of those hapless victims of existence “running on the treadmill to oblivion” verbally constructed by the Boston born wit, Fred Allen, or laughing at the child-adult wisecracks of the Edgar Bergen ventriloquist dummy, “Charlie McCarthy.” My mother, of course, never missed an episode of “The Romance of Helen of Helen Trent” even to its finale, along with the other famous soap operas on Black Friday, November 25,1960, even after we owned a television set for nine years. I, of course, became lost in the defined “kids” shows of the day such as, “return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when from out of the past came the hoofbeats of the great horse “Silver,”…the Lone Ranger rides again. “Hi-yo, Silver- awa-a-a-a-ay!” The masked rider of the plains was always accompanied by his faithful companion (kemo sabe) Tonto. The fact that Tonto was not played by an authentic Native American, but an elderly British Shakespearian actor named John Todd never fazed me a bit. Other shows like “Little Orphan Annie” and “Captain Midnight” were both sponsored by “Ovaltine” the ultimate kid magic elixir (the equivalent of Spirulina or Ubiquinone for today’s adults). The “Ovaltine” drink was but an easily dismissed annoyance in favor of what I was really after, the secret decoder rings- that allowed me to help fight world domination first against fascism, and then communism. The show that I hated the most which was on every Saturday morning at 10:00 am, was “Let’s Pretend;” my mother made me listen to it. To me its only positive aspects were the avoidance for a half and hour of homework or chores. A middle aged woman name Nila Mack presided over a troop of child actors, Mack was to me a combination of Elsa Lanchester and Angela Lansbury (she was pointed out to me once walking on Fifth Avenue near Rockefeller center in New York City). The theme of the show was to tell children’s stories that were not standard fare. They aired stories like “Princess Moonbeam” or “The Yellow Dwarf.” Like leftover 15th century morality plays, these “kid’s shows” simply pandered to the adult idea of what children should be listening to. In a similar way some contemporary architects design “children’s playgrounds” with that attitude. The fun is more for the adult designers that the kids. As an example “The Parc de la Villette” located in the North East of Paris in the 19th Arrondissement, master-planned in the 1980’s by Bernard Tschumi features a science and technology complex plus a music complex. It looks like an amusement park designed by crew from an educational television program, all the danger of life is removed. I visited the park on a weekend. There were very few adults to be seen wandering around in its vast wasteland, and the children were all huddled around a very old-fashioned looking merry-go-round that you could fall off of, hidden by trees. Completely ignored by everyone were the radical chic post-modern swings and endless comfort slides and bright red cubic architectural “follies” (designed by Tschumi himself) that all went to expose a “post-humanist,” “anti-history” sense of modern placelessness- a design ploy which frustrates the child-mind, a consciousness composed almost entirely of wonder and imagination, motivated by a glorified vision of adulthood which one’s parents never seem to live up to. Lest you consider this to be just another futile exercise in “nostalgia ain’t what it used to be,” I consider “kids radio programs” to be a form of education of the imagination of a par with the theatre of fear and terror- that product of fin-de-siècle France Le Théâter Du Grand Guigol. It opened on the 13th of April 1897 and lasted until the latter part of November of 1962 to be finally ended by the rise of Hollywood slasher docudramas and psychological thrillers. Situated at 20 Bis Rue Chaptal in Montmartre, Paris, it featured a variety of troupes of actors which titillated Parisian audiences with its one act performances of murder, mayhem and revenge. Every night on stage they performed stabbings, mutilations, beheadings, gougings, tortures and dismemberments in such graphic detail to a delighted, horrified audience who would often laugh, cry, and faint all in the time of one dark evening. Each set piece was about 15 minutes in length, the same time as a kid’s radio program. Its structure was predicated on the stimulation of the grossest, grotesque, rawest and most adolescent of human interactions and desires: incest and patricide; bloodlust; sexual anxiety and conflict: morbid fascination with bodily mutilation and death; loathing of authority; fear of insanity; an overall disgust for the human condition and its imperfect institutions. The name of the theatre was derived from the medieval “Punch and Judy Shows” for children which was a puppet show in which the little hook-nosed humpback Punch fights savagely but comically with his wife Judy. What appealed to the barbarous cruelty of children was amplified 10 fold in Le Théâtre Du Grand Guignol, and so was the laughter, that dark and hidden ingredient of The Grand Guignol. Its influence on the minds of children did not actually reach its apotheosis until the advent of commercial radio. Science fiction novels took part of The Grand Guignol sensibility but mitigated it because the ideas were transmitted via the 19th century novel which was better suited to personal psychological musings rather than graphic, grotesque, and bizarre behavior for which the motivation is shrouded in the mists of time. Comic books while closer in intent than science fiction novels to The Grand Guignol suffered from their lack of spontaneity. Censors were able to catch stuff they did not like before the comic hit the newsstands. Commercial radio was for the most part live, unlike television that moved quickly from live programs to taping. Although commercial radio had written scripts it was possible to make changes and corrections during the broadcast because the scripts were simple (but well structured as they were in the playlets of The Grand Guignol. The effective realism of early radio to bypass one’s conscious critical powers can not be gainsayed if we but recall or read about that fateful day, October 30, 1938 (Halloween) when Orson Wells with his “The Mercury Theatre on the Air” astounded the world and just plain scared the hell out of the inhabitants of Grovers Mills, New Jersey (a real town decided upon by closing his eyes and stabbing a map of New Jersey) when he dramatized H.G. Wells’s novella “The War of the Worlds” by simply switching the locale from England. After the ballyhoo about martians invading the earth died down in the papers, political pundits like Dorothy Thompson claimed the entire episode “proved how easy it is to start a mass delusion.” I think she missed the point. The real answer is that radio’s use of sound has the power to enter “the theater of the mind” and mess with it. Stephen King, the current maven of monsters, author of such stories as “The Shining,” “Carrie” or “Misery” has described radio’s prime strength as: “the mind’s innate obedience, its willingness to try to see whatever someone suggests it see, no matter how absurd and the fact that fear and horror are blinding emotions that knock out our adult pins from beneath us and leave us groping in the park like children who cannot find the light switch.” What he is saying in essence is that “kids radio programs” reached a level of the subconscious that went deeper than the so-called “collective unconscious,” that term coined by the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) the genetically determined part of the conscious that occurs in all the members of a people or race, and moved into the territory explored by the fin-de-siècle Symbolist Movement. Members of that art movement created what could be called “Zombie Aesthetics” which is the recognition that true symbols which connect time with eternity also connect the living with the dead. The word zombie is the name of the Python god of certain West African tribes and is similar to Pytho, the serpent killed by Apollo that produced the Delphic oracle. It is also related to Kundalini, the serpent-energy that rises through the human charkas inducing enlightenment. A zombie is a person under the influence of revelation, appearing to others as one of the “walking dead.” Visually, zombiism surrounds a symbol with a “layer” of kitsch that has been toughened by the deadly nature of the sacred geometry of Phi. To break through to the revelatory heart of the symbol, it is necessary to penetrate the “kitsch barrier” which protects the inner revelation. Both “Le Théâtre Du Grand Guignol” and “kids radio” broke through the “kitsch barrier” into the realm of pure visionary imagination as opposed to typical scholarship as a method of knowledge. I learned more about my current interest in dimensionality at the start from a show know as “Dimension X” (introduced in diminishing reverberations “Dimension X-X-X-X-X-X…”). It lasted one season between 1950 and 1951. It featured “Adventures in Time and Space Told in the Future Tense,” with commissioned scripts by master science fiction writers like Ray Bradbury, Earl Hammer Jr., Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, and Kurt Vonnegut. Later in 1955, “Dimension X’s” position in radio culture was replaced by “X Minus One.” “From the far horizons of the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space. These are stories of the future, adventures in which you’ll live in a million could-be years on a thousand maybe worlds. The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with Galaxy Magazine, presents X-X-X-X-X…minus-minus-minus-minus….one-one-one-one.” Two other shows that engendered my interest in topology were, first: Arch Oboler’s “Lights Out.” He was the acknowledged Edgar Allan Poe of radio. He often got his ideas from listening to sound-effects records. His most celebrated audio effect was of a man being turned inside out. This was accomplished by turning a watery rubber glove inside out to the accompaniment of crushed berry baskets, to simulate broken bones. I literally lost a week of sleep from that show; second was Himan Brown’s “Inner Sanctum” which starred Raymond Massey as the host of farfetched tales from the crypt which was riddled with eerie sound effects, the best of which was its signature sound of the creaking door which introduced each program. Everyone who remembers when “The Inner Sanctum” left radio for TV, it finally made the creaking door visible. The appearance of the door was certainly horrible- slightly askew and festooned with cobwebs- but to aficionados of radio actually seeing the door was a relief as nothing could have looked as horrible as that creaking door sounded. The radio show “Superman,” not the comic book version, gave me a hint of what it would be like to have a space alien with superhuman powers actually live among us, and take an interest in human affairs (unlike the stern Klaatu from the 1951 movie “The Day The Earth Stood Still” who had absolutely no interest in what the earth did as long as it did not disturb the planetary system that he represented.) That sense of the absolute otherness began to seep into my consciousness when I first began to realize what I was listening to in 1948 when I was eight years old and starting to apprehend “The Shadow,” a program that became my favorite but also the program that most perplexed me because of its title. Each week on Thursday night at 7:30 on station WEEI (by this time I was logging the name of a radio show and flagging different turns on my tuning coil on my crystal set in terms of name, weekday or night exact station and time), the announcer would explain the “The Shadow” (the ultimate alter-ego of the wealthy student of science Lamont Cranston) who long ago while traveling in the orient discovered the power to cloud men’s minds so they can not see him. By this Cranston became H.G. Wells’s “Invisible Man” without the bother of imbibing chemicals, and thereby became the world’s greatest fighter possessed of human DNA. His true identity was known only to his constant friend and companion Margot Lane. The fact that Lamont, even in his incarnation as The Shadow remained a physical being was revealed when he admitted to Margot that his presence could be detected by a photo-electric beam and perhaps destroyed by it. At that time I never directly questioned the physics or the mind-physics of Cranston’s situation except to feel a great disappointment that the ultimate voice of conscience (“who knows what evil l-l-lurks in the hearts of men. And whose sardonic laughter “heh-heh-heh-heh,” was followed by: “the weed of crime bears bitter fruit, The Shadow knows”) became the exploiter of some kind of super-mesmerism rather than a literal shadow which, of course, was the name of the show. What to me was a misnomer actually preyed on my mind for years. How could the writers of my favorite program associate mass hypnosis with becoming a shadow? Would it not have been better to call the main character some variation of “ghost,” “spirit,” “fantom,” or “phantom.” There already was a comic book character by that name out there that even the artist Pablo Picasso was responding to undoubtedly connecting in his mind to the Parisian favorite “Fantômas.” He was a character born in a novel in 1911- a kind of political cat burglar- who roamed the rooftops of Paris at night as the classic anti-hero waging war against bourgeois society as the leader of a vast army of “apaches” (Parisian criminals) capable of sublime horror. His goes back to “The Symbolist Movement,” “The Grand Guignol,” and “Le Chat Noir Café.” Fantômas became the darling of the European modern avant-garde. But the name “shadow” has all the juice: Plato used the shadow as the symbol of illusion and art; J.C. Lavatar in the 18th century said it was the shadow of the face, not the face itself that was the soul’s true reflection; the ancient Egyptians held that there are nine parts to the human personality: Ren (the name), Seknem (the form in heaven), Saho (the spiritual body), Khu (the ethereal casing of the physical body), Khat (the physical body), Ka (the doppelganger of the body which empowers the shadow), Ab (the heart), Ba (the soul in the Ka), and Khaibit (the shadow of the physical body enlivened by the Ka); Masaccio in his fresco of 1427-1428 in Florence depicted Saint Peter healing the sick by simply passing his shadow over the body of the supplicants,” vampires have no reflection in the mirror or shadows because they are the “nosferatu,” the undead existing in a nether world between life and death. For years I thought the title “Shadow” was no more than good marketing. There was another aspect of my life going on besides “my radio programs” and that was the religio-philosophical influence of my father. To the world our household was standard brand Roman Catholicism mainly due to my mother. But my father was different. He was obsessed with the occult from his teenage years. In fact he was a trance medium who performed at the Exeter Street theatre in Boston. He would discuss aspects of Buddhism and Hinduism and what he called “mind-physics” at the dining table. When I was seven years old he started teaching me Hatha Yoga. But when I showed an interest that began to match his, he would often say that my mind could not handle the deep concepts of alchemy, theosophy, gnosticism, magic theosophy etc., and would surely go mad. This warning, of course sparked my interest even more, and has become the source of my artwork. Today, of course, the mystical and the occult has so permeated our culture that even automobiles are shown in advertisements having “near-death-experiences.” The “New Age” since 1875 has reached its seventh incarnation. In the mid 1950’s I began to read books like “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions” by Edwin A. Abbott. By the early 1960’s I was into Robert Fludd, G.I. Gurdjieff (1872-1949), P.D. Ovspensky (1878-1947) and all the rest. But there was actually no one I really could relate to until I discovered Claude Fayette Bragdon. He was born on August 1, 1866 at 4:40am in Oberlin, Ohio and died December 9, 1946 at 12:00 noon in New York City. He was an architect but his father had influenced his direction in life by being part of the first “New Age.” George Chandler Bragdon moved from an interest in the New England Transcendentalists to becoming the founder of the Genesee River Lodge of the then nascent Theosophical Society in Rochester, New York. Claude, however, remained in the background of his father and all the big stars of “New Age” that he met during his life, living a kind of occult “shadow” life for the benefit of people like Krishnamurti. As an architect he worked for the famous shingle style architect, Bruce Price in Tuxedo Park, New York, but at night he began writing books on the subject of the fourth dimension such as “A Primer of Higher Space.” Claude’s life went along like this until he married for the second time. He married on July 13, 1912 Eugenie Julier Macaulay who was a trance medium and love of his life. Her spirit guide was called The Oracle. She died in the late fall of 1920 but before she “passed over” she convinced Claude to become a literal shadow and told him how to do it. She was often in contact with the spirit of Imhotep, the architect of King Zoser of the first dynasty in Ancient Egypt. Her channeled information from Imhotep became the confidence and position of Bragdon to embark upon what Eugenie called “The Shadow Project.” If there exists the means by which consciousness can overcome the limitations of the inertial mass of the physical body and enter “higher dimensions” than the mind, it must also be possible to enter the “lower dimensions,” such as the second dimension of spatiality (a dimensional realm obvious to all) and become a living shadow. This was one of the beliefs of the Ancient Egyptians, and so should be the content of an objective experiment that could test such a hypothesis. By means of slides and a verbal narrative I will reconstruct the chance meeting in 1937 between the science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) and Bragdon in Central Park, New York, when Heinlein was 30 and Bragdon 71. It was during that encounter that full details of what happened on Friday 29, 1924 at the then new skyscraper hotel The Shelton on the corner Forty-Ninth street and Lexington Avenue of what was called “The Shadow Project” were revealed, and how the enormous buzz in the art world of New York in the mid 1920’s Bragdon’s strange quest had caused. So after, the incident entered the popular imagination and theShadow character debuted in 1931 as part of something called “The Blue Coal Radio Review” the show developed its format. Later Orson Welles became Lamont Cranston until he could not take it any longer. Finally the voices Brett Morrison as Lamont and Gertrude Warner as Margot took over as the voices most people are familiar with. In 1954 the show ended abruptly and was never heard from again. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) THE FETAL DREAM OF LIFE INTO DEATH, 2002 Oil paint , acrylic paint, letters, India ink, on linen 21 1/2 x 21 1/2 in. Comments: This painting describes aspects of the fetal dream [ the most primitive of all dreams] that I sustained during my hospitalization which lasted eleven months. The dream occurred in the night between July 18 and 19, 2001. The dream was induced by an attempt to overcome morphine addiction which happened as a result of trying to control the pain of five operations on my right leg while I struggled to decide to have said leg amputated since it was possessed by a demon in the form of osteomyelitis: an infectious bacterial inflammatory disease of the bone: Pseudomonad, any of a genus of gram-negative rod-shaped motile bacteria including some that produce a greenish fluorescent water-soluble pigment and some that are saprophytes or plant or animal pathogens. Eventually my leg was removed to the After Life . Translation : I now have one foot in the grave. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Death and Life of Monsieur Sebastian Melmoth: Au Théâtre du Grand Guignol, 2001-2003 Oil, acrylic, ink, photocollage, vinyl lettering on canvas, curtains and candle 60 x 52 in. Notes: If any two men could represent the polar opposites of nineteenth-century “fin de siècle,” my candidates would be Frederick William Rolfe (1860–1913), alias “Baron Corvo,” and Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900), alias “Sebastian Melmoth.” Rolfe was almost unknown during his lifetime, while Wilde was perhaps the most notorious person in the world. But like all opposites, each contained elements of the other. Both Rolfe and Wilde were six-feet, three-inches tall. Rolfe, the eldest of five brothers, was born in London at 61 Cheapside Street (before it became Newgate Street), on July 22, 1860 (a Cancer on the cusp of Leo), in the shadow of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, in the last days of the London of Charles Dickens, into a Methodist family. Wilde was born in Dublin on October 16, 1854 (a Libra), at 21 Westland Row, into an Anglican family. Both men from childhood wished that they had been born Roman Catholics. Early on, Rolfe did something about it, while Wilde waited until his deathbed. When he was twenty-six, Rolfe became a self-convert to Catholicism, then entered the seminary at Scots College, from which he was soon expelled, but not before beginning his masterpiece titled Hadrian the Seventh, a book that outlined his plan to become pope. Wilde had always asked his father why the family was not Catholic. While living in the Hôtel d’Alsace in Paris in the last year of his life, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday November 29 and died the next day, Friday, November 30, 1900. Now “Baron Corvo” was extremely angry at “Sebastian Melmoth,” not because Wilde was a famous writer and Rolfe was not. And not because Wilde was openly gay and loved himself, while Rolfe was “in the closet” and hated himself. And not because Rolfe was poverty-stricken his whole life, while Wilde had a life of unbridled luxury, lechery, and lust, although he finally died in poverty. And not because Wilde was able to have a wife and family, and Rolfe did not. Wilde, of course, lost his family rights as soon as he was convicted of “gross indecency” on May 25, 1895, at the Old Baily. What really upset “Corvo” about “ Melmoth” was the fact that, after leading a life of pure egotism and debauchery, and after many a succès de scandale, he was able to ensure himself a place in Heaven and to bypass Purgatory completely because although he spent his entire life as an unbeliever, he became a literal deathbed catechumen to Catholicism, with no chance of sinning after his conversion. Before Wilde’s famous and final remark, about the tasteless wallpaper in his hotel room, “The wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death,” he confided to his lifelong friend Robbie Ross, “I am so tired and sick now that I cannot bring myself to commit even the sin of pride.” Ross was able to fetch him a Catholic priest. Apparently in “Corvo’s” zeal to become the pope, he did not heed the wisdom of Matthew 20: 1–16: “So the last shall be first and the first last, for many are called, but few are chosen” . . . or whatever you bargain for, remember that a deal is a deal. And the wisdom is the loving kindness of God toward those who enter the Kingdom of Heaven late that is extolled. In fact, the disparity of his life with Wilde’s became the obsession of the last thirteen years of “Corvo’s” existence. By Wednesday, September 3, 1913, “Corvo” wrote a letter to his last benefactor asking for money. The return address on the letter was the Hotel Cavaletto in Venice, but he was not exactly writing from the hotel. The manager of the hotel threw “Corvo” out for three months for not paying his bills for ten years. “Corvo” found an abandoned gondola and wrote the following: “The last few days I have been anchored near an empty island, Sacca Fisola, not too far away from civilization to be out of reach of fresh water, but lonely enough for dying alone in the boat if need be. Well, to shew you how worn out I am, I frankly say that I have funked it. This is my dilemma. I’ll be quite plain about it. If I stay out on the lagoon, the boat will sink, I shall swim perhaps for a few hours, and then I shall be eaten alive by crabs. At low water every mud bank swarms with them. If I stay anchored near an island, I must keep continually awake. For, the moment I cease moving, I am invaded by swarms of swimming rats, who in the winter are so voracious that they attack even a man who is motionless. I have tried it. And have been bitten.” This must have been when “Corvo’s” mind gave way to a fantasy punishment for Wilde. This letter was written to Reverend Stephen Justin, Rolfe’s final benefactor. In the time they knew each other, Justin advanced Rolfe over 1000 lira on book sales, but Justin never recovered a penny. Justin never answered the final letter. As a last act of generosity on the part of the hotel manager, who could see Rolfe was dying, he let him back in the hotel one more time. Rolfe was found dead at 3:00 P.M. on the afternoon on Sunday, October 26, 1913. When the British consul arrived to view the body and Rolfe’s personal effects, he saw a very neat room with the bed made, the luggage and papers ready for examination. Rolfe himself was laid out, fully clothed, with his arms folded over his chest and his hands holding a white lily. No one in the hotel would admit to being the author of this funeral tableau, which granted Rolfe a modicum of independence and dignity in death, which he could not find in life. In Rolfe’s notebooks the consul discovered enough information, if released to the press, to cause hundreds of scandals. He also noticed (he could not miss it) a huge package, addressed and ready to be sent, with sufficient postage. The address said: A Monsieur Max Maurey, Directeur Théâtre du Grand Guignol 20, rue Chaptal Arrondissement 18, Pigalle Paris, France The consul mused that the address had at the same time too much and not enough information, but he thought the mixture of naïveté that the words implied would see the parcel through any postal bureaucracy. So he sent it off. Max Maurey (the owner of this famous French theatre of horror, which operated from Wednesday, April 13, 1897 to Monday, November 26, 1962) opened the package, which consisted of seven layers of craft and wax paper. When the contents were at last revealed, astonishment came over Maurey’s face at what he saw: 1) One cheap and worn litho of a painting by the famous French academic artist William-Adolphe Bourguereau (1825–1905), one of the teachers of Henri Matisse (1869–1954). The painting is called Evening Mood. It was completed in 1882. After appearing in a few exhibitions in the Salon d’Apollon within the Louvre Palace, it was sold in the mid-1890s to the National Museum of Art in Havana, Cuba. The image in the painting is of a nude, but coy, sixteen-year-old ballerina at the ocean’s edge at dusk with a clear sky. Not another soul exists within this Universe, except, of course, the viewer. This dainty dark-haired girl is seen standing with her entire weight resting on the second tip-toe of her left foot, while her right leg is raised and hooked behind the left heel to receive a flowing drape of almost-transparent green taffeta. Her breasts are perfect hemispheres with blood-red nipples. Her slim smooth abdomen presents a cavernous navel. Her entire demeanor is like a wild mountain daisy transplanted to the watery sand of the beach. Her head is turned from the setting sun to the viewer, waiting to be coaxed into revealing if she loves you or not. If the model were alive today and in the full bloom of her youth, she could be described by a reference to the Song of Solomon, chapter 6, verses 1 to 13 and chapter 7, 1 to 9, and also like someone seen on the website Suicide Girls.com. 2) A picture of Oscar Wilde standing wearing a black velvet waistcoat and vest trimmed in red satin, black gabardine knee breeches, and black silk stockings, finished off with black patent leather pumps. 3) A profile of Rolfe standing at attention at forty-eight years of age, dressed in a high collar and a homemade blue suede suit with fishing pockets, sporting a solid-silver-framed pince-nez, and smoking a cubeb cigarette. 4) A carefully drawn map of the Cimetière de Père Lachaise in Paris and surroundings, and how to get from rue des Pyrénées to the gravesite of Oscar Wilde, which was established in 1909 from the remains of Wilde’s first grave, located just outside Paris at Bagneux. In 1912 Jacob Epstein (1880–1959) finished a headstone-tomb in the form of a stylized sphinx. From the first, this memorial sculpture became an international target for generations of “drag queens” who plant very-hard-to-remove lipstick traces on all of the tomb’s flat surfaces. 5) A sample of the finest black velvet and backing cloth. 6) A votive candle consisting of phthalocyanine blue glass set in a pure gold filigree tripod, each of its twelve units to be set with three rubies. 7) Plans for how to revive a dead body worthy of Leon Theremin, involving solenoids aimed at the Seven Major Charkras of a supine body that have been covered with liquid crystal paint. Since 1891 liquid crystals have been known to be able to indicate even the slightest electromategnetic activity in any corpse or remains in any state of decay. “Baron Corvo” was a master inventor. 8) Plans for how to keep a disembodied head alive forever. Max Maury liked this idea a lot and asked René Berton to write a play for the “Guignol,” which Berton wrote up immediately, although it could not be produced until 1928, when the guillotining of convicts by police was banned in Paris. 9) The plan for a large lighted glass tank of Formalin (a clear aqueous solution of formaldehyde containing a small amount of methanol). 10) A copy of a scientific report on the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano, Italy, about an ostensorium that contains a host of bread that every once in a while turns into striated muscular tissues of the myocardium (the heart wall), and wine that turns into human blood of type AB positive, just like the blood stains on the Shroud of Turin. “Corvo” also includes instructions on how to “cat burglarize” the ostensorium from the Church of Saint Francis in Lanciano, which he said ought to be relatively easy because the reliquary was mounted on top of the main tabernacle of the high alter, and a back stairway had been provided to allow a closer look at the miraculous object. 11) The final thick packet of information to be examined by Max Maurey appeared to be endless construction notes, diagrams, and cardboard pop-up models of the various spaces Rolfe was proposing to construct inside the theatre. Rolfe’s writing was usually dense, opaque, and labyrinthine, and often so boring it took heroic efforts to read it, but since this was his last piece of prose he upped the ante with a total lack of concern for his audience. As Maurey read through the enormous pile of papers he began to realize that Rolfe was describing just one section of a front-door system. The remainder of the room or large cabinet was to project into the lobby of the theatre. The plan of the floor was a six-foot square, and the height was ten feet. All six interior surfaces were to be covered in black velvet with openings into the lobby for access only. The exterior of the six-by-ten panel was divided in two parts. At the top a six-by-one foot sign would announce: “Mesdames et Messieurs, le Théâtre du Guignol is proud to present: The Zombie Aesthetics of Baron Corvo entitled: THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MONSIEUR SEBASTIAN MELMOTH.” Below the sign was to hang a large copy of Evening Mood, five by eight feet. The large navel of the subject of the painting would be cut through the wood panel. The painting, of course, would be positioned so that when a theatre patron approached the navel, it would be at eye level. A glass panel was to be placed over the painting to protect it from the elements. This would be the only way to view the contents of the cabinet. Now the next parts of the instructions were a lot more complex and much more speculative. At this point Maurey almost unconsciously begins to move his head from side to side in a gesture of negativity, disgust, disbelief at what he was reading, which was: i. Retrieve the dead body and/r remains of Oscar Wilde, and place the carcass face up in a guillotine located in the long alley in front of the theatre. ii. Revive the body at the exact moment the guillotine blade begins to descend. iii. Quickly place the severed head into the glass case that will keep it physically alive forever, of course after reviving it and cutting off the eyelids, so the head can not sleep. iv. The body, which is now dead again and doomed to remain so, is placed upright in the tank of Formalin, held in position by the top of the spinal column connected to the top of the tank. v. On top of the tank is placed a medieval vitrine containing the ostensoruim. vi. On top of the vitrine is the large picture of “Corvo,” signed in his own hand: “Yours Faithfully, Corvo.” vii. The floor contains a diagonal cross made from white strips of cloth from an old Alb. viii. On one diagonal twelve votive candles are laid out, evenly spaced, providing the only light source. ix. On the other diagonal, the head case and the body case face each other from opposite corners. By this means, the forever-alive head could see the forever-dead body, the Eucharistic Miracle, and Corvo’s profile smoking, something Wilde wishes he could do but, alas, can no longer do. x. The vocal cords of the head were to be left intact, allowing the head to scream as if the throat was being cut, or to speak the words “please kill me” over and over again xi. In the lobby would be placed a brass plate with a detailed explanation of this strange tableaux, mentioning that this is the proper eternal punishment for one playwright, named Oscar Wilde, alias Sebastian Melmoth (1854-1900), for leading a life of undeserved luxury and notoriety, unnatural debauchery, making his conversion to Roman Catholicism on his secular deathbed, complete with the sacrament of Extreme Unction. Max Maurey had to stop. He could not take any more of what seemed like endless notes cast into the void. After showing the stuff to Berton, Maurey just put it all in the office desk and forgot about it. In 1928 the theatre was co-owned by Camille Choisy and a playwright named Jack Jouvin. During that year they put on the play The Man Who Killed Death many times. As luck would have it, the great French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), who then was dividing his time between Paris and New York City, happened to drop in one evening when the play was being performed. Fascinated by the idea and the set, he began to ask people who did it. By coincidence, René Berton was in the audience. Duchamp asked him where he got the idea. Berton hunted around in the old office desk and pulled out “Corvo’s” papers and said, “Here, I got it from these,” and handed the pile of papers to Duchamp. Quickly scanning the material, Duchamp looked up with an astonished expression on his face and said, “May I borrow these?” “You can have them. There is no way we will ever mount this impossible tableau.” At that period in his life Duchamp was believed to have given up art for chess and a variety of collaborations. But something was going on in secret. Back in his New York City studio, between the years 1946 and 1966, he was building a special assemblage that depicts a nude female figure lying in a field with her genitals exposed, holding up a small gas lamp in front of a background landscape with clouds and what appears to be mechanically driven water-beaten doors mounted into a brick wall. The only way to see this erotic tableau is through two peep holes in a pair of old weather-beaten doors mounted into a brick wall. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has the work on permanent display along with other Duchamps, including The large Glass. The title of Duchamp’s final work is Etant donnés: 1. La Chute d’eau. 2. Le Gaz d’éclairage, which translated into English is “Given: 1. The Waterfall. 2. The Illuminating Gas.” Most art historians claim it is the most mysterious and intriguing work of art in the twentieth century. And it represents Duchamp’s second attempt to depict the theme of yearning, voyeurism, and the inability to experience pleasure due to sexual neurasthenia, all motivated by humorless envy, which, of course, just about sums up the life of “Baron Corvo.” Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) The Five Principals of Geezer Art, 2003 Ink, photocollage, and vinyl lettering on board 31 x 31 in. The art or cultural contribution of the elderly derives from the slang term “Geezer” : a queer , odd, or elderly eccentric person. The word comes from “guiser” [ one in disguise],a word from Scottish Gaelic. In relation to the “Youth Cult” of 1950’s and 1960’s that we have just passed through, “geezer” means the youth you once were is in “disguise” inside an old body. Often the elderly complain to younger companions of a 20 year old soul trapped in an 80 year old body, etc. The desire for self-reliance and serious interaction with the world and history burns as brightly as ever, while the young may deny this of the old. Even Satan , feels the sting of the passage of time [his estimated age dates from the time of the Big-Bang]. He cringes when newly created angels overhear him exclaim to himself, “I am as bad as I ever was”. Today, however, the tide has turned. The population is getting older and remaining healthy. The average person over 65 has an exercise regimen and takes at least 35 nutritive supplements. Households where some members reach the age of 100 is not uncommon. And the wisdom a person gains over a lifetime is being cherished again. The old are no longer being looked upon as a wad of Kleenex to be used for their money and thrown away, or shunned like an alien from another dimension. Fans of culture heroes are flocking back to those like Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882], who offer a true ideology free alternative to the secular commercial world that has now codified a new and rigid class system. Emerson’s concept of the “Oversoul” as the Absolute Reality and the basis of separate existences within time , is of an ideal nature, which is only imperfectly manifested in human beings, nevertheless, is somehow always perfectly realized. This transcendental outlook which eschewed the “standard brand” religions of the East and the West and Skepticism, allowed Emerson to influence people as diverse as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin [1881-1955] and Friedrich Nietzche [1844-1900], who both as a result managed to avoid Theism, Atheism, and Agnosticism. Emerson was , therefore, a true geezer – an old soul that when he was young was in disguise, a soul that was revealed when his body began to decay. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) PICKMAN'S MEPHITIC MODELS, 2004 Oil and acrylic paint, vinyl letters, India Ink, photo-collage, velvet drapes, human thigh bones, on linen canvas. 68 x 52 in. In May of 1980 I received an announcement in the post from “The First Annual H.P.Lovecraft Festival” to be held in the basement of Sayles Hall on the campus of Brown University at 4:00 P.M. on Friday October 31,1980. Since I have read the horror stories of Lovecraft and found his world-view fascinating [ a false atheism disguising a self-discovered mythology], and I did graduate from Brown , I decided to go to Providence just to visit my Alma Mater once again, but I was also filled with curiosity about Lovecraft. The auditorium was not very crowded and there were no festive decorations ,only a list of speakers who had known Lovecraft for a few years before he died, and a second string of writers who had known those who had known him firsthand. The speakers varied in age from kids who were 22 like S.T.Joshi those who were like “old men “ to me like Willis Conover at 59, and those even older who had contracted throat cancer and became laryngectomees and had to use a voice prosthetic to speak. While speaking they sounded like the “Old Ones” from deep space on the other side of Reality. When the lectures were finished, the moderator mentioned two events for members of the audience in which they could participate. The first was a single file walk around Providence on the painted footfalls of H.P.Lovecraft [ 1890-1937]. These footfalls were also those his spiritual mentor Edgar Allan Poe [1809 – 1849]. The other activity that was offered was to go up to the top floor of The John Hay Library where they displayed Lovecraft memorabilia in hermetically sealed vitrines . I chose the second. Climbing the large stairs to a room I never realized existed in The John Hay, I felt it was like entering a room from a horror movie. It is there for the moment you see it, but gone when you return a few days later. The interior of this perfect square high ceiling room appeared to be designed in 18th Century English Georgian, typical of early American Universities. And , of course, Brown was founded in 1764. The room’s oak paneled wainscots, coffered ceilings, unadorned window-apertures and fanlights, were echoed in the design of the vitrines. I was surprised to see so very few people milling about, and those that were there would stop and stare and hover, like Las Vegas “one armed bandit” gamblers over some story Lovecraft had hand written in his anal-retentive script, or a list of his favorite ice cream flavors, perhaps a cover of “WEIRD TALES” from its founding year of 1923, a copy of the accursed “NECRONOMICON” in bad condition, and some snap-shots of Sonia H. Greene the older woman who helped Lovecraft get over his mother’s death in 1921 by marrying him in 1924 and divorcing him in 1929. Altogether there were 12 vitrines arranged in a square. In the center space was a rotating stool. On the stool sat a man dressed in black that resembled “Ikabod Crane” who carried a long wooden rod [ that looked like a painter’s maulstick]. I discovered that soon enough as I spent [according to him] too long over a reproduction of a Tibetan mountain scene painted by Nicolas Roerich [ 1874-1947], that was used to illustrate the story “ At The Mountains of Madness”. I thought someone was tapping me on the .shoulder. When I looked up it was the gaunt man on the stool poking me with his stick saying: ”Move on”. Becoming annoyed at this rude behavior, I countered with “Where are the illustrations for “Pickman’s Model” ? I am a Boston painter and I like that story of Lovecraft the best. And I know he liked the paintings of Heinrich Füssli [1741-1825] especially the one that made him famous called “The Nightmare”. “ Yes he did , sir. We keep some of Pickman’s work in the next room”. “What do you mean – Pickman”s work ? Are you by any chance implying that Pickman was a real person and an artist from Boston and not just a figment of Lovecraft’s imagination ?” “ He was very much alive and may be yet. Richard Upton Pickman was born on Joy Street in the Beacon Hill section of Boston Massachusetts on November 1, [All Saint”s Day] 1893. That made him a contemporary of Mr. Lovecraft. And by the way are you with today’s conference, or a member of the Brown University of the Rhode Island School Of Design communities ?” “ If you mean by that, did I graduate from Brown ? Yes I did”. “ Very good sir, step this way”. There were so few people left in the large room ,he felt comfortable about leaving his stool and opening a side door which led into a climate controlled smaller room.. A few students, I assumed they were from R.I.S.D., were painting copies of some of the paintings that hung on the walls. What I saw on those walls struck me dumb. I had to turn away from the paintings for a minute in order to suppress a retch. After awhile I became accustomed to their bizarre appearances, I noticed 4 paintings which seemed less figurative. Looking at them more closely I realized they were not abstract paintings. Instead they seemed almost like photographs of strange creatures put through a blender, resulting in images that looked like they were executed by an artist whose left hand painted as did Pablo Picasso [1881-1973], and whose right hand imitated Francis Bacon [1909 -1992]. I was so absorbed by my thoughts, I almost failed to notice a young painter with not one but four easels grouped around him copying four of these “strange creatures”. He went from one copy-canvas to the next and so forth , and then back to the first in what appeared to be outrageous flurry of activity , that gave him the aura of being possessed. Even his breathing was rapid and angry from behind clenched teeth. At this point my curiosity got the better of me . Since he was facing away from me I came up behind him and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He burst into chaos and screaming. One the easels fell. I picked it up along with the half completed painting. “He began to shout :”Get away from me , or I’ll destroy your life unto the third generation”. Taken aback by his hostile behavior, I started for the door. But I stopped when I heard the voice of a very beautiful girl nearby. “ Don’t mind him mister he’s nuts”. And she spoke directly to the young man. “Arnie, stop it . You’re supposed to answer the questions of people who come in here . And remember what Mister Whateley said , If you act up once more , he will never let back in here”. That threat seemed to cut through his emotional explosion. Now perfectly calm, he addressed me . “May I help you , Sir “ ,in tones reminiscent of the man in the main room on the stool… [ to be continued next time…] Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) HE PHYSICALLY ALIVE STRUCTURED ENVIRONMENT: THE BAUHAROQUE, 2004 India ink , photo-collage, vinyl letters on acid free board 31 1/8 x 31 1/8 in. The Modern Movement in architecture was based primarily in Utopian Solutions to its constructed Tasks. To complete these Tasks The Moderns combined Science [ as the desire to differentiate Nature indefinitely with Personal Intuition, so as to inform the architect when to make an end. Modernism’s most pressing problem was assumed to be the construction of Mass-Housing that is truly affordable by all. Although the real issue was stated by the Modernists, somehow it was never solved successfully by their many strategies that included but not limited to Architectural Planning at the Macro and Micro Scales that would make anyone who ever attended L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts take on a green patina , and the study of New Materials combined with Progressive Engineering that looked to Nature as the Source of its Structural Principles. The Post-Modernists who converged Science with Nostalgia avoided the Present, and its problems altogether, in favor of reviving the Past. As we enter The Bauharoque [the third phase of Modernism] , architects are now faced with such problems as : bulging populations [ the United Nations has predicted that by the year 2050 the world’s population will have reached 18 billion, and this will mean to feed and house these teeming masses will require as drastic as raising three more continents the size of Africa from the ocean floor], un--winnable terrorist wars that seem to keep on escalating, a general and continuous degrading of the world’s natural environment, politics as entertainment and a substitute for religion, or the popular media making money by pitting various interest groups and classes against each other. I believe that if a strategy for mass housing could found, that would involve non-repressive personal environments [ that would avoid mechanical standardization], a base could be established from which other social problems will be solved. Then finally the quest for meaning in existence could gradually replace the goals of our almost complete secular world. To do this requires the total convergence of Science with Mysticism. While this task has already been started a few individuals and groups [beginning in the 19th Century], it will not be until the entire world is involved, will a real change be noticed. My proposal ,therefore, for ending the world housing shortage is by growing houses from plant materials and developing genetically altered seeds which will induce habitable forms in single multiple species. These forms will then begin to approximate the rich vocabulary of spaces the history of the Human Species has created from the individual home to the city with mass and image of New York City [ which has now proliferated on the earth where a goal for urbanism is desired] Recently the sciences of botany and bio-engineering have discovered four fuctions that plants can perform that can aid plant-human relations: 1. Semyon Davidovich Kirlian through his electro-photography discovered that plants bridge the abyss between life and death and regeneration; 2. When tobacco plants are gene-spliced with luciferin from fireflies the plants will light up with 5 watts of cold light. Soon bio-engineering will increase the light level to 100 watts; 3. Spinach leaves exhibit the highest electrical potential of all plantforms: 10volts D.C. 4. Large groupings of groupings of carnivorous plants can control insect populations within a confined area. What could be a more plausible or delightful solution than to live in a world-wide garden - The New Eden – populated with physically alive architecture that could exist almost anywhere on the Earth’s surface or under the ocean or up in the air, that was produced in growing time of approximately two to three months. Also as Humanity begins to explore other planets and moons ,I do not believe , people will like living in high-tech tin cans on barren wastelands. We would certainly prefer Bio-forming an environment that exists as an individual ,and therefore , has a stake in staying alive, to the ill-fated Bio-Sphere Projects that were simply a complex form of the 19th Century Conservatory or greenhouse. The Conservatory has one basis drawback. It is a building type that requires Human intervention to protect the plant species inside. The purpose of Das Urpflanze Haus or physically alive architecture is to do what all architecture is supposed to do – protect us from an alien environment. We exist on the Earth because of the existence of Vegetation , not the other way around. Over the aeons we have been weakening the life force plant materials by protecting them by artificial cultivation techniques and Hot Houses. What we must do is help plant species regain their rightful place in the world as the Prime Species and avail ourselves of their protection and love by willing to fall in love with plant forms and feed ourselves by eating their delicious fruits and nutritious vegetables [ which are seed pods which are produced in an abundance beyond what is necessary for sustainable reproduction]. Bringing this proposal to fruition will first require prototypes created by grafting plant materials in forms generated by advancements in Combinatorial Topology – the branch of mathematics that the best chance of understanding the true nature of Biology. The secret of grafting and growing DAS URPFLANZE HAUS [the primordial plant house] to a mature and seeded state is the Ginko Biloba or The Maidenhair Tree. Native to China , it tolerates all climates and soils. It was saved from extinction in the 19th Century by certain Chinese Monasteries. The tree dates from the Permian Period of the Paleozoic Era [286 to 245 million years ago], making the Ginko Biloba the oldest flowering plant, and the fact that it was alive during the time of the Dinosaurs live shoots of The Tree can connect deciduous to conifer trees , fruits to vegetables, and grasses to vines. The Ginko Biloba is not subject to the so-called Divine Proportion [.382…/.618…] which is actually The Proportion of Death. The poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1832] on May 17, 1787 wrote to a philosopher friend, Johann Gottfried von Herder [1744-1803] about the active nature of the Urpflanze, he had recently conceived, and the way it which it links to the Human Will . “The archetypal plant will be the strangest growth the world has ever seen, and Nture herself shall envy me for it. With such a model, and the key to it in one’s hand, one will be able to contrive an infinite variety of plants. They will be strictly logical plants, in other words, even though they may not actually exist, they could exist. They will not be mere picturesque and imaginative projections. They will be imbued with Inner Truth and Necessity. And the same law will be applicable to all that lives.” My first contact with the concept of The Urpflanze and poet Goethe occurred in my grammar school days when I lived in Belmont Massachusetts. I went to a public school, THE MARY LEE BURBANK SCHOOL . It was at the time what people called a “progressive school”. The curricula emphasized instruction in alternative forms of education. What this meant was visiting other types of schools in the area to study other subjects that we did not normally encounter. To my classmates this was just great, like going to the movies for school credit. To me most of what I discovered was pure hokum, except for one place – a school so small that it was held in the upper floor of a large Shingle Style House at the top of a hill on Myrtle Street. The place was called ‘THE WALDORF SCHOOL OF BELMONT MASSACHUSETTS”. It was part of the educational outreach program of The Anthroposophical Society founded in 1912 by mystic Rudolf Steiner, that had its headquarters in a building dedicated to Goethe called THE GOETHEANUM [ a school of Spiritual Science] located in a suburb of Basel Switzerland – Dornach. In the Waldorf School the children seemed to be painting and drawing all the time which really interested me. One day my school drove us to a place called THE GOETHE INSTITUTE of BOSTON which is on Beacon Street in the downtown. We were given a slide lecture on Steiner, The Goetheanum[the startling appearance of which caused me to become interested in architecture] and finally Goethe’s concept of The Primordial Plant – THE URPFLANZE from which all other plants are derived. After the class I asked the lecturer if Goethe ever found THE URPFLANZE ? She looked down smiling condescendingly and said : “While Goethe’s ideas were wonderful, they were long before the work of Darwin.” Suddenly the Magic I was experiencing was about to end, so I blurted out : “ If you connected all the plants together across the face of the earth would not then THE URPFLANZE EXIST”. With that her expression changed. Since 1950 to the present, I have been developing the implications of that FIRST IDEA. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) THE PARTURIENT BLESSED MORALITY OF PHYSIOLOGICAL DIMENSIONALITY: ALEPH — NULL NUMBER, 2004 - 2006 Giclee print on Ultra Smooth Fine Art 100 percent rag paper Image Size: 16 x 23 in. Paper Size: 17 7/8 x 24 7/8 in. Signed and numbered by the artist Edition of 75 (1) Physiological Dimensionality: The Manifestation Of Fate :[The Parturient Blessed Morality Of Physiological Dimensionality: Aleph- Null Number] 17 V. x 24 H. India Ink, vinyl letters, and photo-collage on board 2004 Rationalized dimensionality above and below the dimensional realm- the dimension that has been defined as “consensus reality” – is the work of the geometer and astronomer Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), who conceived on a higher-dimensional analytic geometry, and the mathematician-physicist Georg Friedrich Bernard Riemann (1826-1866), who as a student was influenced by Gauss. From 300 B.C.E. to 1854 the third dimension of the ancient Greek geometer Euclid held sway over the spatial imaginations of most of the population of the Western world. Even a mind as brilliant as that possessed by Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was not immune. The sense of the misplaced absolutism concerning space and time was never challenged with the exception of G.W. Leibniz (1646-1716) until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Then a number of mathematicians began to voice a new direction such as Nikolay Ivanovich Labachevsky (1792-1856) and Jonos Bolyai. But it was ultimately Riemann who advanced the concept of dimensionality into an N-dimensional manifold with a metric so as to establish a quantitative rule for assigning lengths to paths. This now meant that one could consider force or energy to be a consequence to geometry, making the laws of nature seem simpler when viewed from the context of a more comprehensive dimensional space. The apotheosis of his thinking resulted in the revolution in physics initiated in the early twentieth century by Albert Einstein (1879-1955), and continues to influence contemporary physics although modified into quantum geometry. From the mid-nineteenth century until now, dimensionality has gradually replaced the traditional concept of fate, first anthropomorphized by the ancient Greeks as three female sovereigns who determine the course of human life. The fates from the latin “fata” (singular- “fatum”) derives from the ancient Greek word “moirai” (singular- “moira”). Both words mean “prophetic declarations” or “oracular utterances.” When an event is said to be fated it is the same as that particular event being decreed to come to pass. But for humanity the future always remains unknowable except for an occasional divine inspiration which is seldom heeded. The interlocutor for the Romans was Jupiter, while the decisions of the fates for the Greeks were spoken by Zeus. Cassandra, a daughter of Priam (King of Troy), was endowed with the gift prophecy but fated never to be believed. This is the condition the human species finds itself in relation to the future, never to know the absolute future, but always believing it can. In the Greek and Roman cultures the three fates: 1. Cloto- the spinner- she who spins the thread of life; 2. Lachesis- the disposer of lots- she who determines the length of life; 3. Atropos- the inflexible- she who cuts off the thread of life. These were all called goddesses. They were, however, of such primordial nature that even early Greek commentators such as the poet Hesiod (FL. CA. 800 B.C.E.) and the historian Herodotus (CA. 484-420 B.C.E.), considered them Titans (the parents of the gods). Eventually even that description would not suffice. Ultimately the function of the fates in the universe became associated with the term “anagke” or necessity. This is a concept that includes the notions of both the abstract and the concrete, and idea for which we have no word because it is assumed that they are opposites. Even the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (CA. 428-348 B.C.E.) was unable to find a principle that would act as a sufficient contrary to necessity. He proposed the concept “nous” or reason. In the Timaeus, one of his last writings, he had to accept that reason- the highest and most perfect knowledge humans could strive for- could only persuade the dictates of necessity, that is sometimes. The fact that necessity has no particular concern for the human condition either individually or collectively casts a shadow on the efficacy of reason to persuade anything. This doubt led in classical Greek drama to a tragic sense of life in which humanity lives in a tension of faith in the future and hope for personal control in the present by reason. And since life seems like an abrupt vacillation between joy and agony, passion and apathy, success and struggle, it was assumed that all human concerns are subject to the whim of the gods. And sometimes even the gods are dominated by necessity. The discovery of chance or caprice to be paradoxically at the heart of the fates led the ancient Greeks to wonder to what extent the human soul might be in some similar fashion free and not just a marionette on the gods. From then on the history of Western thought became a philosophical investigation based on the theme of fate and human freedom. On the one hand, fate was viewed as the phenomena of existence that we all have to endure regardless of who we are, while on the other hand, the soul and/or consciousness became the repository of an endless investigation over the centuries of precisely how free we actually are and under what circumstances. The concern for the phenomena of existence became Naturphilosophie or The Philosophy of Nature. Its subject matter was, at the end of the nineteenth century, nearly all of the objective sciences which eventually fell under the rubric, of quantitative science. For years the study of physics was known as the most favored among the absolute or formal studies. As we enter the twenty-first century it seems that biology has pulled ahead and now physics is becoming one of the applied sciences. Lebensphilosophie or The Philosophy of Llife was at mid-nineteenth century, defined as an overall vision of/or attitude toward life in general and the purpose of human life in particular. Deriving from The Zeitgeist- a concept invented by Johann Wolf Gang von Goethe (1749-1832) in 1790- Lebensphilosophie was gradually fleshed out as the intellectual, moral, historical, religious, and cultural climate of an era. In order to discover the degrees of freedom possessed by the human soul, it became necessary to throw out the widest net possible to encompass those subjects which eventually were called the humanities. These are the branches of learning such as philosophy, languages or the arts that investigate human constructs and concerns as opposed to natural processes as in physics or chemistry. The humanities, of course, began by being concerned with quality- one of the basic categories of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) Quality is defined as that by virtue of which a thing is such and such. It may be a habit, disposition, capacity, or the form and figure of a thing. Qualities were considered primary and secondary. The primaries of things are solidity, extension, figure, motion, rest, and number. Secondary qualities are colors, sounds, tastes, smells, etc. But by the beginning of the eighteenth century George Berkeley (1685-1753) Irish philosopher and bishop challenged Aristotle’s distinction with his identification of being with perception. “Esse est percipi” (to be it to be perceived) was his philosophical slogan. Berkeley called his philosophy of life immaterialism, that is nothing material exists. Agreeing with the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) that all ideas originate in sense experience. We have, therefore, no immediate perception of our three-dimensional world. Instead, claimed Berkeley, we experience our sensations by means of co-operation amongst the senses, while learning to refer these impressions to their appropriate spatial distances, and thereby correctly interpret their magnitudes. For most of the nineteenth century and for seventy years into the twentieth century The Philosophy Of Nature held sway as objective quantitative science, while the sense of quality associated with The Philosophy of Life was looked upon with suspicion, if tolerated at all. This reign of quantity, (that is useless to assess the nature of consciousness, let alone such concepts as soul and spirit), became the intellectual means by which pseudoscientific statements of the time could be tolerated and eventually fostered. One statement that was particularly vicious and so typical of the mid-nineteenth fifties could be heard on the campus of any college teaching the school of psychology known as behaviorism. ___________________ Bernard Riemann [ 1826-1866 ] student of Carl Friedrich Gauss [ 1777-1855 ] developed what we currently call dimensionality. Since dimensionality in the generic sense means the range over which, or to the degree to which any entification manifests itself, it often became further defined as a series contextual propositions. In other words it is a language which Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889-1951] considered a weltanschuung or worldview, an idea that was eventually fleshed out by Benjamin Lee Whorf. But these ideas have kept dimensionality well within the scope of practical science in which one paradigm becomes either parasitic to or subsumptive of all other paradigms. The person who moved dimensionality away from the iron grip of traditional mathematics and back to the Ancient Greek concept of Fate, was Georg Cantor [1845-1918], who posing as a mathematician [ a scientist who abhors the concept of infinity in its abstract and concrete manifestations], sought the realm of actual Absolute Infinity – the Aleph-Null Number. This was his search for the living presence of the number of elements in the set of all integers which is the smallest transfinite cardinal number, which goes beyond or surpasses any finite number, group or magnitude. What Cantor was doing was following the learning process of The Kabbalah, which is a search for God from a base of total materialistic skepticism. One of Cantor’s followers, Kurt Gödel [1909-1963] actually attempted to devise a mathematical proof of the existence of God. This all leads to the idea that consciousness is embedded within the nature of dimensionality, and that consciousness can not be defined totally as we experience it in our fourth dimensional realm of Time-Solvoid by projecting our definition of consciousness, learned from experience, onto other more comprehensive and less comprehensive realms. Consciousness presents itself, therefore, as a family of forms – an octave of intelligence many aspects of which can not be accessed by our human intelligence. But the fact that analogy-cum-metaphor is the operation of the imagination means, even if the transfer of the mind is never complete, that aliveness and deadness are terms relative to a dimensional realm. Beyond the human realm of Time-Solvoid, the existence and nature of consciousness is often designated as God , gods, demigods, Demons divas, Angels ,souls, heroes , etc. While accepted as part of nature, these entities are rarely understood. Below or less comprehensive than the human realm, consciousness in the form of ghosts, apparitions , shadows or hallucinations are just as distant from human consciousness as members of the so-called divine realm. But the real difference is that most humans feel obviously and naturally superior to these entities. This feeling is often translated into propositions which state that these beings are without any kind of consciousness, and that the attribution of consciousness to them , is what gave rise to the existence of superstition prior to the rise of experimental science. A science that tried, on the one hand, to discover their true nature, and on the other hand, to dismiss their existence as flim-flam. The pre-scientific Ancient Egyptian Civilization accepted shadows as having consciousness. Of the nine parts of the Egyptian personality, two were about the shadow. The Khaibit (the shadow of the physical body) which never leaves the carcass, and The Ka (the doppelganger) the shadow of the soul that moves freely about the Earth and the stars are interpreted as phenomena such as lucid dreaming or the out-of-the-body-experience in terms of human perception. While both forms of the shadow are ultimately the same, the dynamic and static forms demonstrate the form of Life-Death of the Shadow. In today’s world-view, very few people believe that shadows possess a form of consciousness, let alone believe that a human can communicate with one. To most people the shadow is simply the result of solid objects in space blocking the rays of a light source and that is it. The association of light with consciousness has a history lost in time. But closer to our time James Clerk Maxwell [1831-1879] discovered in 1856 the relation between light and electricity which led eventually to the theory of the electromagnetic spectrum which developed in the early 1930’s. From about 1875 on, the Occult vision of dimensionality, akin to the Pythagorean musical scale of infinite extent, was introduced and supported by Maxwell’s discovery. Degrees of consciousness, from almost blinding light to almost total darkness, provide the metaphor for Good to Evil, The Divine to The Demonic, Life to Death, all as degrees of embodiment. These are the aspects of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, which include what we call visible light –a very small portion of the spectrum. Most of the spectrum is undetectable by our unaided senses, but nevertheless, it contains octaves of energy which separate themselves into individual dimensions. Today so-called “physical light” is a metaphor the position of human consciousness within the total dimensional system for two reasons: (1) “Physical light” always has its origin in the Past, whether or not that origin is a star or a candle; (2) The “brilliance” that we associate with light exists in Nature only in the minds of intelligent conscious life-forms, and is not inherent in the non-conscious aspects of Nature. The photons which deliver energy to waiting retinae do not “carry” light. If it was the case that they do, the entire Universe would be “lit up” all of the time in an isotropic and homogeneous manner, and there would be no “darkness” in the Sky. The symbol for the velocity light has been in our contemporary world the letter “C” meaning 299,796 + or – 4 km./ sec. in a vacuum near the Earth , or in the open air. But now astrophysicists are discovering there is a type of space which can not be monitored by any aspects of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is the space where an old star goes when it explodes and dies. This space is distinct from the space of a Black Hole, only in the sense that the Black Hole space is an infinitesimal point of that , space infinite in extent, which acts as the background energy plenum of the Universe. On Earth these same astrophysicists have discovered a way of slowing down the speed of light to 17 mph by changes of media. They expect very soon to have light to travel at 4 mph. Then everyone will be able to interact directly with light, even the blind , because the energy of the electromagnetic spectrum travels in the human brain at 700 mph. According to Philip Gibbs in an article entitled: “The Symbol For The Speed Of Light ? “, he states : “…, it is possible that its use persisted because “C” could stand for “celeritas” and had therefore become a conventional symbol for speed. We can not tell for sure how Drude, Lorentz, Planck or Einstein thought about their notation, so there can be no definitive answer for what it stood for then. The only logical answer is that when you use the symbol “C”, it stands for whatever possibility you prefer “. While there are many physicists who propose an identification between light and consciousness by means of formulae that rival the simplicity and power of Einstein’s famous E = Mc2. I prefer, therefore, to use “C’ to stand for consciousness. Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) COSMOGENESIS TO CHRISTOGENESIS, 2005 India ink, acrylic paint, photocollage, vinyl letters on acid free board 30 x 30 in. It was in 1965 that I first became aware of the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin S.J. [ 1881 – 1955 ]. An architect in the office where I happened to be working handed me a tattered French copy of “Le Phénomène Humain” with a copyright date of 1955, saying “Here this will explain Paolo Soleri [ 1919- ] . Soleri was “hot” at that time and Bruce who knew my recent history with Frederick J. Kiesler [ 1890-1965 ] thought he might “one-up” me in our design group. Not realizing what the book was about, I dove in. Now my reading of French is adequate enough to read Rimbaud or Mallarmé in the original , but Teilhard was something else. I hunted around for an English translation and found The Second Harper Torchbook Edition published in 1965. It was soon evident to me that the only relation Soleri had to this work were some obvious attempts at a pastiche of Teilhard’s neologisms to help prop up his 1950’s style of “pseudo-sculpture-as-architecture” derived not from the writings of Teilhard but from the works of Frank Lloyd Wright [ 1869-1959 ] – his architectural father figure from which Soleri always claimed to have “revolted” In 1973 I met Soleri at the University of Maine, Portland. We were both on a panel the subject of which was to debate the idea of building one of his mega-structures in that state. He took the “pro”, of course, I was told to take the “con”. Before the debate I discovered that most of the land that would be offered for the project exists in the dreaded Black Fly areas of Maine. As the discussion continued Soleri began to proselytize that every person of the 10,000 souls that could enter this “arcology” would have complete artistic freedom in their 50 foot cube of space. My response to his statement was given the Black Fly problem, I would cover the enormous 50 foot square opening with the strongest screens possible, plant real grass on the floor of the cube, paint the walls and ceiling light blue with trompe-l’oeil clouds and pine and maple trees on the three remaining sides. Then I would call up the architectural office of Royal Barry Wills and Associates, whose address at that time was 8 Newbury Street in Boston, and ask for their signature design house – a seven room Cape Cod bungalow complete with two dormer windows facing the “street”, an exact duplicate of my family home in Belmont Massachusetts. James Wines, a New York City architect and director of Site Inc. who was in the audience led the laughter which caused Soleri’s face to become red with rage. In retaliation he began shouting back at the audience and me , saying that we are all living in the past with no sense of the future, and if he only had his personal 1955 edition of Le Phénomene Humain with all his marginalia, he would be able to demonstrate the connection between Teilhard and himself. Suddenly a light went on in my mind. I had brought along the copy of my old book saying, “ I was given a book similar to what you are talking about 8 years ago. After the debate I was planning to ask you to sign it for me. Sorry about its condition, someone has ruined it by underlining everything and scribbling on its pages in French. Will it do for your immediate purposes? Soleri took the book and at first looked astonished. Then his face went purple. He started shouting again, “This is my book which I bought in 1955 in Paris with my notes in it. I have been looking for it for over 15 years. How the hell did you get it?” I started my explanation, but was soon drowned out by the laughter which started again. It became so loud that the moderator had to end the evening. People do not often associate Teilhard with a sense of humor. But like all really creative individuals, his wit was deep and extensive. During his student days he participated in “The Piltdown Man Hoax” in 1908, where a number of jaded anthropologists, himself, and one Charles Dawson all buried in Piltdown Common in East Sussex England, an ancient human skull with the mandible of a modern ape. Two years later they dug it up declaring they had discovered “The Missing Link”. It was not until 1953, 45 years later that the Bulletin of The British Museum of Natural History stated that “The Eoanthropus Dawsoni” was a carefully planned piece of flim flam. It was not ,however, until 1994 that it was revealed that Teilhard was involved, 86 years after his Phd. And 39 years after his death ! What stand up comic today could wait that long for the punch-line. Later in his life he did tell a joke in public. It was a variation on the old “There ain’t nobody here but us chickens”, a one-liner about a farmer with shotgun in hand who chases a slippery chicken thief into the barn and asks the classic question at the door, “ Is there anybody in here ?” , and receives the above answer. Teilhard’s spin on it was during a lecture on the nature of the Cosmos, Evolution and The Omega Point. Someone in the audience , expecting a very different kind of answer to the question he posed, asked “Do you believe in extraterrestrial intelligent life in the Universe ?” The answer was “ No! There is nobody here but us”. Instead of breaking out in laughter, the audience was stunned into silence. Everyone had expected the usual agnostic-science-fiction-evasion. Teilhard was interested in hard science, not factoid speculation, which was exactly what his critics , including The Catholic Church, claimed he was doing. What Teilhard was doing is what any serious scientist does from a base of established facts derived from experimentation, you apply deductive and inductive reasoning in order to build new hypotheses which may or may not advance the body of human knowledge. This is exactly the type of thought that Charles Darwin { 1809-1882 ] applied to the multiplicity of all living creatures and ourselves which we experience. Darwin assumed that survival was the result of ongoing chance variations in all forms of life, some of which were selected to live in adaptive response to equally chance variations in earth environments. Teilhard armed with same facts plus a belief in the reality and power of consciousness came to another conclusion about the nature of Evolution. To him Evolution appeared to have a purpose and a conscious direction in time – in other words teleonomic design. This is not the teleological design of Saint Thomas Aquinas [ 1225 – 1274 ] who professed a static vision of the Universe. In the late 1970’s this Thomistic position was revived under the rubric of “creation-science” or Creationism which began its program by challenging the age of fossils and artifacts and the Universe [ which secular science considers to be 15 billion years old ]. Teilhard chose not to be limited by exact dates, realizing that scientific dating is the most ephemeral of things, instead he preferred to examine long range tendencies that are practically ageless as is the custom of Buddhists and Hindus. But unlike them [ who deny any value of the nature of life except for the finding the Real Exit from It , not just physical death ] ,Teilhard wanted people to recognize that Life does have a point to it – The Omega Point. Ever since I discovered Teilhard’s writings, I wished that I had been old enough to have met him face to face, or at least someone who knew him personally. I did get the second part of the wish one year after I met Soleri. On Sunday April 7, 1974 at 2:00 P.M. in the afternoon [ the twelfth anniversary of my father’s death ] , the phone rang in my studio and a very officious middle-aged woman asked to speak to me and when she did, she announced that she was the companion of Sister Incarnata Marie, S.I.W.. and she was about to speak to me. I went through a moment of private panic that the Church Authorities had finally caught up with me and I was about to be given a one-way ticket to Hell for all my past sins , when I heard the voice of the sweetest sounding little old lady . Still sharp as a tack she said: “Hello Paul, I am The Atomic Nun from Parma Ohio and I have a special request to ask of you”. At first I thought this was a practical joke being perpetrated on me by some friends who know I am an aficionado of 1950’s science fiction movies. But then I realized that I do not have any friends with that much imagination. A simple “What is it ?”, was my response. “I want you to design my new Solar University which will be levitated over a tributary of The Lake of The Ozarks in Missouri”. In turn I asked her how she got my name. Her answer without hesitation was, “The visionary architect Paolo Soleri recommended you. I was just talking to him, and he told me that he was too busy right now to take on any new work. But he assured me that I had the time and he had every confidence in my abilities”. “So that’s it I thought. This is not just a simple practical joke, it is an elaborate and delayed April Fools’ Day prank as a revenge for the embarrassment I had caused him the year before. I decided , however, instead of slamming the receiver down ,to play along just to see where this would lead. My first question to her was ,”How large is your budget for this project ?” “ Oh, I don’t know. I had hoped you can take care of that, or least help me work that out. I am aware that it will cost millions and millions of dollars. But I have two funding sources”. “First : I have the ear of The Papal Nuncio who promised me The Holy Church will match whatever funding I can raise. Second: my own funding will consist of the profits from a Broadway Musical I am writing which will bring in a lot of money.” “What is the name ?” “The working title is: The Catholic Atom among The Eight Nuclear Families”. At this point in the conversation, I became poised on the razor edge between doubt and faith as to whether or not I was talking to the world’s greatest liar or a truly insane person. So I pressed on. “What is a Catholic Atom? , I always thought the least we could ask of atoms is that they remain agnostic”. I could hear her smile on the other end of the phone as she said : “Now ,Now , that is not The Spirit. The Catholic Atom is what is responsible for The Resurrection of Christ and His Ascension into Heaven, the Direct Ascension of The Blessed Virgin Mary to Heaven before death, and what will be the cause of The Rapture and The Resurrection of all the human dead before The Final Judgment.” Becoming somewhat annoyed at her theological side-step, I started insisting, “Yes, but what is The Catholic Atom from the point of view of current physical theory ?” She then began to describe a dynamic structure that sounded very similar to what I was working on as an invention – a special type of gyroscope that weighs less while in operation than in its static mode. We went back and forth in our conversation like a mental game of tennis anticipating each other’s thought until we realized we were describing the same entity. As she talked on endlessly I began to imagine the architectural form her Solar University would take, I blurted out: “It should be a gigantic sphere floating gracefully about 25 feet above the water level of The Lake – what I call “The Levogyre”, thereby holding The Solar University of great physical weight aloft like a helium balloon”. She then said: “Yes, Yes, of course, I will send you the sketches of my vision of the structure. I am beginning to see why Soleri refused my commission. He felt I was trying to build an impossible structure. And now talking to you, I know it can be done because you have convinced me that The Catholic Atom has no “natural” size and can exist at the Macro-Scale”. With our major business arrangements over , we continued our conversation on a more personal note. I learned that she was born in 1880 and her secular name Claudine Bolduc. As an novitiate she took classes in theology and philosophy at Église de La Sorbonne and spent some time studying with Henri Bergson [ 1859-1941 ] who was teaching at The College of France. Knowing that Teilhard also studied with Bergson, plus the fact that “The Atomic Nun” and Teilhard were one year apart in age, I breathlessly asked the next question. “Did you by any chance know Teilhard?” “Yes”, came back her answer, Although he was born in Sarcenat and traveled a lot , we would often hold informal salons with a mutual friend Lecomte du Noüy [ 1883- 1947 ], who like me was born in Paris. Our salons were often presided over by Monsieur le Professeur Bergson, and held at the Café Les Deux Magots which is on Boulevard St. Germain. Of course , this was years before Sartre and The Existentialists took over the place and it became too noisy to talk. I told Teilhard that I was going to do for The Atomic Realm what he was proposing for The Cosmos. Because he and Lecomte du Noüy had not published yet –or were prohibited from publishing – my self-styled task was to spread The Word. It was then that The Church placed me in a mental institution, and during The Occupation the Nazis threw me into a Vichy prison for spreading “ insurgency”. After The War, I was under house arrest at Saint Sulpice until the 1960’s when miraculously I was released and sent to The United States to live. The Church Authorities said The Americans all talk like you now, and frankly we are bored listening to you.” Over the next few months we continued to update each other on progress. But one day her companion called saying The Good Sister had passed on to her reward, adding that she almost reached 95. And suddenly I was alone again. picture not available Paul Laffoley (b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts) Basia: Fallen Angel Losing Her Wings, 2002 - 2006 Oil paint and India ink on gesso board with constructed wooden frame 73 1/2 x 73 1/2 in. Basia: the fallen angel at the instant of losing her wings, while entering a female human body making her now appear as an earth bound, fiercely independent Barbara: the primitive woman in the state of Nature, so strong she can crush any contemporary petit-maître. Her power as a life-changing genius of the emotions is also efficacious as a healing agent – this is “the triumph of the feminine will”, a natural born femme fatale who is paradoxically fragile, optimistic and joyful as a daisy: the thirtieth Aeon called Sophia. Homage to: Ayn Rand, Leni Riefenstahl, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos, Edvard Munch, Gustave Moreau, and Alfred Kubin