Further Reading

Tuesday, 25 September 2007

The Chambers of Imagination, Knowledge & Memory

As human we are naturally gifted with an ability to see, feel and imagine and it is often referred to as our charisma, magnetism or our aura. The origins of the human soul, or spirit and the imagination are all aspects of the source that creates all life. As creators in our own right, we have the ability to draw in and express this vital energy, especially when we are in a heightened state of awareness.

You could say that it is this magic and power emanating from a person that makes them seem super-human and charismatic to others. In some cases this energy can be turned on and tuned into by forces that exist outside of this three dimensional reality, so that the individual concerned, seems 'god-like'. Some of these thought forms (energies) can be of a lower frequency range; others are of a higher level of love and wisdom.

What we align ourselves with through our thoughts and actions will attract the same states of mind to us. As always it is the intention behind the thought that creates reality. In this way angels can also be demons, depending on our state of mind and how open our hearts are. In more modern terms it could be said that what we eat, watch and think, we become.

It could be said that all life exists because of the creative impulse that ignites the ideas, which become solid forms in our world. Everything from a mountain to a teaspoon only exists, because of an energy that formulates particles of matter, which solidify or slow down to become physical objects. Whether it is the mind of the Earth (Gaia) shaping the landscape of her body to accommodate changes brought on by how we as a species relate to her; Or an idea in the mind of an individual, which then becomes a painting, book or film in the physical world. All physical forms exist because of the influence of unseen forces and how they aid us in delivering our personal magic to the world.

The eye, the cosmic and philosophical egg and the matrix are common subjects found in visionary art. They have also found there way into science fiction films, not least the film The Matrix. The Egyptians used eye symbolism to symbolise the fact that we see with the brain and not the eyes. In scholastic tradition there are three chambers of the brain, which work on a co-operative basis and this concept can also be found in the aboriginal stories relating to the dreamtime. These chambers are the imagination, knowledge and memory.

Alchemical studies also show the macrocosmic concepts in relation to the eye and the egg and how we perceive the world around us, using our imagination, knowledge and memory. The astronomer and mathematician John Dee (1527 -1608), who was close to the Tudor Blue Bloods, used the egg as a glyph for the ethereal heavens, simply because the orbit of planets within it forms an oval. For the 15th century doctor and philosopher, Paracelsus, "the Sky is a shell which separates the world of God's heaven from one another, as does the shell of the egg". "The yolk represents the lower sphere, the white the upper; the yolk: earth and water, the white: air and fire". The 17th Century alchemist and artist Robert Fludd also said of the eye and the chambers of the brain:

" ... in relation to the five senses of man: earth: touch, water: taste, air: smell, ether: hearing, fire: seeing. This "sensitive world" is "imagined" in the first brain chamber, by the transforming power of the soul, into shadowy duplicate, and then transcended in the next chamber of capacity for judgement and knowledge: through the keenness of the spirit the soul penetrates to the divine "world of the intellect" [heart]. The last chamber is the centre of memory and movement."

Alchemists and visionaries throughout history connect images of the egg and the eye, and both relate to macrocosmic understanding of how we see the world. Large parts of William Blake's poetry are concerned with a detailed engagement with Isaac Newton's materialist view of the world. Isaac Newton as we have seen was a high ranking member of the Rosicrucian Order and connected to the creation of the 'this-world-is-all-there-is science. For Blake the physical are was dull and dim "like a black pebble in a churning sea", and the optic nerve, to which Newton pays homage, "builds stone bulwarks against a raging sea."

Blake instead turned to the work of Jacob Böhme, a 15th Century philosopher and alchemist, to develop his own optics of the visionary. In fact every level of Blake's poem Milton is based on an optical model within the form of a cosmic egg. The egg shell for Blake, as seen in the illustration of the Four Zoas, signifies mankind's limited field of vision, "an immense/hardened shadow of all things upon our vegetated Earth, / enlarged into dimension and deformed into indefinite space."

The egg represents what is often called the 'freeze vibration' and is also a symbol for the conditioned 'enclaved' aspect of the human soul. The four intersecting circles are inscribed with the names of the four Zoas, the apocalyptic creatures that represent the elemental forces of the Universe (for more on this see Through Ancient Eyes). The egg-shape for Blake also represented the world of Los, a mythical figure for the eternal imagination, which forms the illusory three-dimensional space defined by the two boundaries of opacity (Satan) and the material condensation (Adam). Stripping away the religious terminology, the eye (egg) obstructs man's free vision of things as they really are. (NEIL HAGUE)


Original artwork by Neil Hague 'Through The Heart Of The Puppet Master'