The library
PSYCHOSIS: “Experimental” and Real
It is not difficult to see how insights, whether into oneself or the outside world, can precipitate "psychotic" episodes, and why from that point onward the individual is likely to find it difficult to articulate with the culture. There are at least two ways in which an "insight" can trigger a neurological "jam session": (1) by arousing an intense emotion and thus altering the chemical composition of the blood and consequently the functioning of the brain, and (2) by a sudden collapse of boundaries between two or more cognitive structures previously kept separated from each other, within that particular individual's total set of cognitive structures.
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Hesiod, Theogony, Part 1 – Hymn to the Muses
A reading of 'Hymn to the Muses' from Hesiods Theogony. Read by Daniel Mirante and accompanied by high-res closeups of 'Parnassus', by Andrea Mantegna, oil and egg tempera painting.
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Hymn to Proserpine
“Hymn to Proserpine” is a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in Poems and Ballads in 1866. The poem is addressed to the goddess Proserpina, the Roman equivalent of Persephone, but laments the rise of Christianity for displacing the pagan goddess and the pantheon.
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Novalis: Hymns to the Night (Part I)
Novalis, pseudonym of Friedrich Leopold, Freiherr von (baron of) Hardenberg, (born May 2, 1772, Oberwiederstedt, Prussian Saxony [Germany]—died March 25, 1801, Weissenfels, Saxony [Germany]), early German Romantic poet and theorist who greatly influenced later Romantic thought. Seven…
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The Subcreation Theory of J.R.R. Tolkien
A discussion delving deep into J.R.R Tolkiens' personal philosophy of the creative process- 'subcreation' and how it was informed by his spirituality.
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The Mistress of Vision by Francis Thompson
Francis Thompson's poem 'The Mistress of Vision' was written and worked on c.1895‒6 while FT was living at Pantasaph, and it was first published in New Poems (1897) in a section titled 'Sight and Insight'.
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On Raglan Road by Kavanaugh Paul
The attested story is that Patrick Kavanagh personally gave Luke the poem. The setting of the ballad to the air of the older song 'The Breaking of the Day', which Kavanagh himself desired, is in no way straightforward; in fact it's a work of musical genius. That's why Kavanagh probably thought "I can't fit the words and music quite right, I've tried; if anyone can, this man can do it."
EssayProtected: 21st Century Visionaries : Oleg Korolev
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Goddess of the Jewelled Web – The Transmission of the Transpersonal in Visionary Art
Art striving for an existential veracity or 'truth' will be put upon a difficult and confusing road, forking and branching pathways; between on one hand positivist and nominalist systems tending toward rationality (as in 'ratio', to measure), and on the other extreme something akin to pure aesthetics, decor, and the enjoyment of a sensoric object. What we wish to seek here is a deeper meaning for the Arts which put Sacred Art upon a respectable and integral foundation.
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Yearning, Sorrow & Desire – The Capriccio of Monsu Desiderio and Descendents
Ruins hold an enigma for artists concerned with the psycho-archeology of culture. Capricci is a yearning for the archaic, it is also a kind of solace for the broken-hearted who feel they are born to times where the ruins are not physical, but symbolic.
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Thomas Cole’s The Course Of Empire (in his own words)
Thomas Cole’s importance and influence as an American artist exploded during the mid‐1830s and his career flourished in the early 1840s. He deeply influenced his immediate peers and successive generations of American artists. He transformed the landscape genre from a reflective art to a medium of expressing historical, social, and political theory.
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Psychedelia & Visionary Art
This essay investigates the poetics of visionary art as a result of interactions between local cultures and non-ordinary states of consciousness. We seek, through brief examples, to draw a parallel between images produced in the past, images produced by Amazonian tribes, and the production of contemporary artists and to point out series of meaningful coincidences between them.
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Remaking Cultural Sense – The Symbolist World of Peladan
Symbolism is a forerunner of contemporary visionary art. It prefigures the transformation from classical and traditional premodern forms into a more dynamic, idiosyncratic personal vision. It is with great pleasure that Era Of Visions can share this original interview with Sasha Chaitow, who generously shared her expertise. Sasha is a contemporary scholar of the Symbolist Movement, who has focussed her research on the enigmatic, influential figure known as Peladan.
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Psychedelic-Visionary Art: Possible Kitch Incursions?
This paper aims to make a brief reflection on kitsch and psychedelic-visionary artistic production. The words psychedelic-visionary here are being used together representing the same concept.
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Psychegnosis
The altruistic and compassionate instinct in humanity seeks for the wellbeing of the entire community if not all sentient beings, and so the reason for application of spiritual effort is not only driven by the individuals longing for Union but also for the spiritual enlightenment of humanity and for the reduction of suffering wherever possible. We can call this collective effort <em>'The Great Work'</em>. As its heart or centre is the individual communion with the Divine, which we have described as <em>autopsychegnosia</em>.
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Gustave Moreau’s “Archeological Allegory”
Against the supposed claims of such work to historical authenticity, Moreau formulated a principle of "archeological allegory," which entailed the use of archeological source material in highly eccentric, deliberately anachronistic ways in his compositions.
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A Cosmological Hypothesis
The following pages by Dr. A. Kafkalides have been taken from his book (in Greek) Beyond the Boundaries of the Womb which was left unfinished in 1987 due to his death. We thank John Alevizos , Nicholas Biniaris and Jody Morgan for the translation of the pages into English.
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To See a World: Art and the I of the Beholder
Like huge successive waves crashing ashore, worldviews succeed one another, and the avant-garde, at its best, were the great surfers of these waves. And now that the postmodem wave is washing on the shore of its own demise, what new waves are forthcoming? What new worldviews surge from the ocean of the soul to announce a new perception?
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On Visionary Art
The Visionary lineage predates religion, and has informed sacred art across the millennia. The Visionary artist is the eternal poet – ‘ein verschollener Stil’ is the grammar through which they speak. The lineage from these founding fathers is subtle but true. From the shaman’s etchings, this artistic spirit continues into the carvings of the ancients.
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Beyond Mind – Steps to a Meta-transpersonal Psychology
Though broadening the scope of consciousness may give access to the transpersonal realm and the experiences of cosmic unity, and so on, that are characteristic of it, this does not necessarily amount to the transcendence of ego-delusion.
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Introduction to Transpersonal Perinatal Psychology
The symbolism of regression to the womb can be found in shamanism, myths of great heroes, fairy tales, and initiation rites. Recurring patterns of symbolic regression and rebirth appears to be a fundamental way in which pre- and perinatal experience influences postnatal consciousness.
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The Function Of Art
One of the essential characteristics of art, which consists in a certain intrinsic ‘affinity’ of art with religion, which in certain ways renders artists interpreters of the infinite perfections of God, and particularly of the beauty and harmony of God’s creation.
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Principles and Criteria of Art
Man by his theomorphism is at the same time a work of art and also an artist; a work of art because he is an “image'', and an artist because this image is that of the Divine Artist.
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The Universality of Sacred Art
It must be borne in mind that a sacred symbol is not merely a conventional sign; it manifests its archetype by virtue of a certain ontological law. As Ananda Coomaraswamy has observed, a sacred symbol is, in a sense, that which it expresses. For this very reason, traditional symbolism is never devoid of beauty.
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The New Eye – Visionary Art and Tradition
The historical lineage of visionary artists masks a deeper and more commanding claim that sets the genre apart from the marvelous idiosyncrasies of outsider art. The claim is that the visionary artist gives personal expression to a transpersonal dimension, a cosmic plane that uncovers the nature that lies beyond naturalism, and that reveals, not an individual imagination, but an imaginal world, a mundus imaginalis.
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The Man With The Golden Coin
Oleg Korolev, magical realism painter, takes us on a journey through the past 150 years of art history and development, exploring the tensions between modernism and the traditional and sacred.
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Toward a Bio-Ethic in Painting – Part 1
Developing an understanding of eco-friendly materials, and how to make a holistic assessment of their impacts and potentially less impactful materials in our studio practice.
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