Acadia : Arcadia?
Part 2 : Arcadia
Photographs from the Imaginal World
Acadia : Arcadia ? part 2 Photographs from the Imaginal World
Click on images to enlarge
Acadia : Arcadia ? Part 4 Commentaries & On Constructing the Symmetrical Photograph
The Angels ~ Part VI This part includes additional images of Acadia National Park
The Angels ~ Part VII This part includes additional mandalas made from Acadia National Park images
The Angels ~ Part VI This part includes additional images of Acadia National Park
The Angels ~ Part VII This part includes additional mandalas made from Acadia National Park images
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All the objects of this entire world
Appear and dissolve, appear and dissolve.
Not a single moment is the same.
Everything is constantly changing,
Everything constantly becomes something else.
~
This universe is filled with amazement,
It is continually surprising.
Nevertheless, in reality,
It does not even exist.
~ Bholenath ~
poet-saint of India
Quoted by Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
in her talk April 3, 1986
"The Conviction of the Heart"
*
*
The power of the creative imagination . . . enables each
of us, if we consent, to give birth to the Angel,
whose grace allows us to see
all the world as an Icon.
For we give birth
not only to God,
but the world
itself,
transfigured in the light of a personal vision.
~ Tom Cheetham ~
After Prophecy
of us, if we consent, to give birth to the Angel,
whose grace allows us to see
all the world as an Icon.
For we give birth
not only to God,
but the world
itself,
transfigured in the light of a personal vision.
~ Tom Cheetham ~
After Prophecy
Introduction
The photographs in this, the second part of the Acaida : Arcadia? project consists of symmetrical photographs constructed with images I took in Acadia National Park during a three day visit in late September, 2014. The images presented below symbolize "all the world as an Icon," the imaginal world of Arcadia. Symbols transcend ordinary place and time; they take us out of this world of time and space--and constant change--into a grace-filled, silent, timeless world of unknowable transcendent mystery.
A park ranger Gloria and I talked to in Acadia mentioned that many visitors mistakenly invoke the name of the mythical place Arcadia when speaking of the park and its natural wonders. It has been my intention that the images below transfigure our beautiful but broken Earth-- which has become victimized by our greed and ignorance--into the Angelic archetypal symbol of wholeness, light and splendor that it truly is.
Arcadia is the mythic home of Pan, the Greek God of the Wild. In European Renaissance arts Arcadia was celebrated as an unspoiled, harmonious wilderness, an idyllic paradise immortalized by Virgil in his Eclogues, a literary political re-vision of Rome in the turbulent period between 44 and 38 BC. My symmetrical photographs below may indeed be motivated in part by my desire to re-vise or transfigure the politically corrupted, physically wounded and poisoned planet we live on in this turbulent era known in the yogic sanskrit literatures as Kali Yuga.
Acadia The Climate Transfiguration of the world
Our planet Earth is in serious trouble. It is suffering a rapid degradation named Global Warming or Climate Change. Its water and air and soil is being filled with toxins; strangled and burned and drowned by human greed, political corruption, ignorance, denial, lies and misleading propaganda. Our unwillingness as a global community to address the crisis that is warming our oceans and making them dangerously acidic, that is dissolving the planet's protective ozone layer which allows increased radiation to filter down to Earth, which is causing our glaciers to melt, which in turns causes the oceans to swell and warm more rapidly, which in turn is transforming the ecology of our entire planet in ways that are now probably irreversible. Many scientists say all we can do at this point is slow down the process.
The primary culprit is human: our increased production of carbon dioxide and methane gas, and our greedy and irresponsible extraction and use (abuse) of highly polluting fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. For example, horribly toxic chemicals are being used in the process known as hydrofracking of oil and natural gas which pollutes high volumes of our planet's precious and rapidly depleting fresh waters; the process pollutes the air we breath and the land which produces our food; and we inject the toxic and radioactive waste liquids from the process into the ground which causes Earthquakes and leaks into and ruins valuable life sustaining aquifers. to learn more click here and click here
The warming oceans are causing the coral reefs to dissolve; fish species are going extinct from over fishing and the many deadly toxic contaminates in the waters. Shell fish are becoming diseased with an unknown ailment which prevents their protective shells from hardening, and much more: visit ecowatch.com. Climate Change is causing record breaking droughts, fires, storms, floods.
Scientists have known about this rapidly progressing global crisis for a long time; the research is quite clear and available for all to see; however too many people are ignorant of the situation thanks to the media's unwillingness to report the truth. It instead allows advertising from the gas and oil industry that sustains the lies and misrepresents what is really happening to our planet. NPR is sadly guilty of this.
Most people simply don't want to know about or choose not to acknowledge climate change publicly. Politicians are unwilling to act righteously for the good of all; instead they pocket gifts from the gas and oil lobbyists and force the rest of us into paying taxes which will be used to increase production of oil and natural gas and the shipment of most of it across the country and overseas. We pay higher taxes so a few individuals gain in wealth and power while at the same time we become victims in terms of poor health and broken infrastructure which we pay even more taxes for. In short, we become the collateral damage of the corporate world, the politicians, and the toxic production practices of extracting and processing fossil fuels for a few individuals who care only about the bottom line. Kali Yuga
The Perfect Balance
I have been a student of yoga for the past 27 years; and in 2011 I became fascinated by the sacred art and sacred knowledge traditions of the mystical aspect of Islam: Sufism. Visit my project "An Imaginary Book" and The Angels. The Hindu and Sufi traditions are rich with revealed literature about a deeper, hidden reality that lies behind or beyond the surfaces of Earthly appearance. The great saints and poets of all religions speak of such things, and the greatest artists of every age and culture have been preoccupied with unveiling, through their suprasensory, imaginative visions, the invisible and timeless nature of Reality.
My continuing challenge as an artist-photographer has been to find the perfect balance between appearance and abstraction, between matter and spirit, between the visible and the invisible, between time and eternity. My intention is to make visual symbols, or Icons, but I can't afford to ignore the Earth I live on. The great Sufi mystics say that the Earth is an Angel. Hopefully the photographs below succeed to some degree in achieving a transformative balance between representation and abstraction that gives birth to the Intermediate Imaginal World. . . Welcome to Arcadia.
A park ranger Gloria and I talked to in Acadia mentioned that many visitors mistakenly invoke the name of the mythical place Arcadia when speaking of the park and its natural wonders. It has been my intention that the images below transfigure our beautiful but broken Earth-- which has become victimized by our greed and ignorance--into the Angelic archetypal symbol of wholeness, light and splendor that it truly is.
*
Arcadia Imaginal transfigured world
Acadia The Climate Transfiguration of the world
Our planet Earth is in serious trouble. It is suffering a rapid degradation named Global Warming or Climate Change. Its water and air and soil is being filled with toxins; strangled and burned and drowned by human greed, political corruption, ignorance, denial, lies and misleading propaganda. Our unwillingness as a global community to address the crisis that is warming our oceans and making them dangerously acidic, that is dissolving the planet's protective ozone layer which allows increased radiation to filter down to Earth, which is causing our glaciers to melt, which in turns causes the oceans to swell and warm more rapidly, which in turn is transforming the ecology of our entire planet in ways that are now probably irreversible. Many scientists say all we can do at this point is slow down the process.
The primary culprit is human: our increased production of carbon dioxide and methane gas, and our greedy and irresponsible extraction and use (abuse) of highly polluting fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. For example, horribly toxic chemicals are being used in the process known as hydrofracking of oil and natural gas which pollutes high volumes of our planet's precious and rapidly depleting fresh waters; the process pollutes the air we breath and the land which produces our food; and we inject the toxic and radioactive waste liquids from the process into the ground which causes Earthquakes and leaks into and ruins valuable life sustaining aquifers. to learn more click here and click here
The warming oceans are causing the coral reefs to dissolve; fish species are going extinct from over fishing and the many deadly toxic contaminates in the waters. Shell fish are becoming diseased with an unknown ailment which prevents their protective shells from hardening, and much more: visit ecowatch.com. Climate Change is causing record breaking droughts, fires, storms, floods.
Scientists have known about this rapidly progressing global crisis for a long time; the research is quite clear and available for all to see; however too many people are ignorant of the situation thanks to the media's unwillingness to report the truth. It instead allows advertising from the gas and oil industry that sustains the lies and misrepresents what is really happening to our planet. NPR is sadly guilty of this.
Most people simply don't want to know about or choose not to acknowledge climate change publicly. Politicians are unwilling to act righteously for the good of all; instead they pocket gifts from the gas and oil lobbyists and force the rest of us into paying taxes which will be used to increase production of oil and natural gas and the shipment of most of it across the country and overseas. We pay higher taxes so a few individuals gain in wealth and power while at the same time we become victims in terms of poor health and broken infrastructure which we pay even more taxes for. In short, we become the collateral damage of the corporate world, the politicians, and the toxic production practices of extracting and processing fossil fuels for a few individuals who care only about the bottom line. Kali Yuga
*
The Perfect Balance
I have been a student of yoga for the past 27 years; and in 2011 I became fascinated by the sacred art and sacred knowledge traditions of the mystical aspect of Islam: Sufism. Visit my project "An Imaginary Book" and The Angels. The Hindu and Sufi traditions are rich with revealed literature about a deeper, hidden reality that lies behind or beyond the surfaces of Earthly appearance. The great saints and poets of all religions speak of such things, and the greatest artists of every age and culture have been preoccupied with unveiling, through their suprasensory, imaginative visions, the invisible and timeless nature of Reality.
My continuing challenge as an artist-photographer has been to find the perfect balance between appearance and abstraction, between matter and spirit, between the visible and the invisible, between time and eternity. My intention is to make visual symbols, or Icons, but I can't afford to ignore the Earth I live on. The great Sufi mystics say that the Earth is an Angel. Hopefully the photographs below succeed to some degree in achieving a transformative balance between representation and abstraction that gives birth to the Intermediate Imaginal World. . . Welcome to Arcadia.
*
Textual Prelude
~ to the ~
Arcadia Photographs
Henry Corbin speaks . . . of the iconography, the theosophy of art, as it were, which accompanies this vision of the world. . . . What is required of such art is not that it be representational, but symbolic.
In the spaces of iconographic, symbolic art, [Corbin writes] "All the elements are represented in their real dimensions, in each case perpendicularly to the axis of the viewer's vision. . .
Contemplation of the image becomes a mental itinerary, an inner accomplishment; the image fulfills the function of a mandala. . . . to contemplate them is to enter into a multidimensional world . . . And the whole forms a unity of qualitative time, in which past and future are simultaneously in the present."
The function of such an art is not representation, however beautiful, but transformation and transfiguration of the soul and of the world. . . Tom Cheetham The World Turned Inside Out
An Icon is . . . a dialogical reality, and the lines of perspective converge on the person engaged in dialogue with the reality of the symbol displayed.
The icon is a sacred window onto the invisible world. . . It is up to us to see the world with the eyes of prayer, the eyes that regard the Icon. All things are images, and an image can be viewed as an Icon only if we ourselves are transformed into imaginal persons--persons who can see imaginal realities. Tom Cheetham All the World An Icon
In so far as any being is contemplated in its difference from God, it will appear to be self-subsistent. That is when we are most at risk of idolatry. Any being understood as an end it itself is an idol. . .
Insofar as anything is perceived as determinate and comprehensible, to that degree it is a Veil of the divinity. And yet in truth all things are masks of the infinite, and their being is the gift of God. All things are organs by which God contemplates Himself and are not other than He. To overcome the Test of the Veil requires that we not become trapped in the literal face of any being, that we not idolize it but rather see in it a Face of God. Tom Cheetham All the World An Icon
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Arcadia
The Photographs
Symmetrical images made with
photographs taken in Acadia National Park
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #1
(view from Cadillac Mountain)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #2
(view from Cadillac Mountain)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #3
(Desert Island)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #4
(view from Cadillac Mountain)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #5
(Desert Island)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #6
(view from Cadillac Mountain)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #7
(Desert Island)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #8
(view from Cadillac Mountain)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #9
(view from Cadillac Mountain)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #10
(rock on the top of Cadillac Mountain)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #11
(Schoodic Peninsula)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #12
(tide pool ~ Schoodic Peninsula)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #13
(tide pool ~ Schoodic Peninsula)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #14
(tide pool ~ Schoodic Peninsula)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #15
(tide pool ~ Schoodic Peninsula)
Arcadia ~ symmetrical photographs from the Imaginal World ~ Image #16
(tide pool ~ Schoodic Peninsula)
Note:
contains a suite of five symmetrical
photographs constructed with
Acadia source images.
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This Part II of my Acadia-Arcadia project was first posted in the
"Latest Addition" section of my Photography website's
"Welcome Page" on November 26, 2014
the day before Thanksgiving.
Click on images to enlarge
Acadia : Arcadia ? Part 4 Commentaries & On Constructing the Symmetrical Photograph
The Angels ~ Part VI This part includes additional images of Acadia National Park
The Angels ~ Part VII This part includes additional mandalas made from Acadia National Park images
The Angels ~ Part VI This part includes additional images of Acadia National Park
The Angels ~ Part VII This part includes additional mandalas made from Acadia National Park images
.