As Above, So Below
~
The
Mirror
Mirror
In the Temple
WATER Photographs, part 2
WATER Photographs, part 2
Click on the images to enlarge
That which is Below corresponds
to that which is Above,
and that which is Above corresponds
to that which is Below,
to accomplish the miracle of
the "One Thing"
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The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus
Alchemical Treatise
Introduction
In my first Introductory chapter to the WATER project I included several brief excerpts from Paul Claudel's visionary-poetic project Underground Church in Chicago which Gaston Bachelard included in his book Water and Dreams : An Essay On the Imagination of Matter. As I was preparing this introduction for chapter 2, The Mirror in the Temple, I found that I was still being haunted by Claudel's ideas and images and Bachelard's commentary on them. Thus I have decided it would be useful to review that material, briefly here again, for there is a direct relationship between Claudel's "underground lake" which "signifies the sky" and the "mirror in the Temple" which I'll be illuminating about in this project.
Claudel writes for his project Underground Church in Chicago about a "lake" which exists below the surface of the the Earth. This body of underground water, laying at the "bottom of a sacred basin" surly must be located in the Center of the Earth for the image this invokes in me has a numinous, archetypal-primordial presence or aura. Indeed, Claudel himself tells us that there is an "immense symbolism" associated "Water" which he says chiefly "signifies the Sky."
Claudel's lake, then, seems to reflect the Sky. It is, in other words, a water-mirror that conjoins earth and sky. The reflection--indeed the entire poetic image--is an image of Unitary Reality. As we shall see, the "Mirror in the Temple" that I'll be writing about accomplishes the same alchemical "miracle" of the "One Thing."
Claudel tells us that "thirsty souls" would be crowded "row upon row" around the sacred basin filled with Water. This Water is feminine, maternal in nature; the "sacred basin" is a Womb about to give birth . . . perhaps to a Sacred Being, One who will emerge from the Center of the Earth to bring a new kind of light (Sacred Knowledge) into the outer world.
Bachelard quotes Claudel: "Everything the Heart desires can be reduced to a water figure," then Bachelard invokes the divine: "Water, the greatest of desires is the truly inexhaustible divine gift." And in response to Claudel's statement regarding the "immense symbolism of Water," Bachelard comments: "Water in its symbolism can bring everything together."
Claudel's lake must be in the Center of the Earth because it functions both as a mirror and as a symbol; and because the "mirror in the Temple" is located in the center of the Temple. The Center signifies what I like to call the Heart which is located at the very center of every thing Sacred, including we human Beings. The Center is also the (invisible) Origin-point from which symbolic images emerge from the inner Imaginal world into visibility. The three symmetrical photographs I'll be presenting and writing about in this project function for me as symbols.
The title of this project The Mirror in the Temple is a reference to a basin of water which is located at the center of a mosque in Isfahan. Henry Corbin refers to it as a "water-mirror." In the quote that follows, from Corbin's essay "Emblematic Cities," he refers to the mosque as a Templum which we will see later is both a place of visionary experience, the dwelling place of the divine, and the very organ of [transcendent] vision.
Corbin writes: At the geometrical center of the enclosure [of the Mosque] we find a basin whose fresh water is perpetually renewed. This is a water-mirror, reflecting at the same time the dome of heaven, which is the real dome of the templum, and the many-colored ceramic tiles which cover the surfaces. It is by means of this mirror that the templum brings about the meeting of heaven and earth. The mirror of the water here polarizes the symbol of the center. Now this phenomenon of the mirror at the centre of the structure of the templum is also central to the metaphysics professed by a whole lineage of Iranian philosophers . . .
*
Claudel writes for his project Underground Church in Chicago about a "lake" which exists below the surface of the the Earth. This body of underground water, laying at the "bottom of a sacred basin" surly must be located in the Center of the Earth for the image this invokes in me has a numinous, archetypal-primordial presence or aura. Indeed, Claudel himself tells us that there is an "immense symbolism" associated "Water" which he says chiefly "signifies the Sky."
Claudel's lake, then, seems to reflect the Sky. It is, in other words, a water-mirror that conjoins earth and sky. The reflection--indeed the entire poetic image--is an image of Unitary Reality. As we shall see, the "Mirror in the Temple" that I'll be writing about accomplishes the same alchemical "miracle" of the "One Thing."
Claudel tells us that "thirsty souls" would be crowded "row upon row" around the sacred basin filled with Water. This Water is feminine, maternal in nature; the "sacred basin" is a Womb about to give birth . . . perhaps to a Sacred Being, One who will emerge from the Center of the Earth to bring a new kind of light (Sacred Knowledge) into the outer world.
Bachelard quotes Claudel: "Everything the Heart desires can be reduced to a water figure," then Bachelard invokes the divine: "Water, the greatest of desires is the truly inexhaustible divine gift." And in response to Claudel's statement regarding the "immense symbolism of Water," Bachelard comments: "Water in its symbolism can bring everything together."
Claudel's lake must be in the Center of the Earth because it functions both as a mirror and as a symbol; and because the "mirror in the Temple" is located in the center of the Temple. The Center signifies what I like to call the Heart which is located at the very center of every thing Sacred, including we human Beings. The Center is also the (invisible) Origin-point from which symbolic images emerge from the inner Imaginal world into visibility. The three symmetrical photographs I'll be presenting and writing about in this project function for me as symbols.
*
The title of this project The Mirror in the Temple is a reference to a basin of water which is located at the center of a mosque in Isfahan. Henry Corbin refers to it as a "water-mirror." In the quote that follows, from Corbin's essay "Emblematic Cities," he refers to the mosque as a Templum which we will see later is both a place of visionary experience, the dwelling place of the divine, and the very organ of [transcendent] vision.
Corbin writes: At the geometrical center of the enclosure [of the Mosque] we find a basin whose fresh water is perpetually renewed. This is a water-mirror, reflecting at the same time the dome of heaven, which is the real dome of the templum, and the many-colored ceramic tiles which cover the surfaces. It is by means of this mirror that the templum brings about the meeting of heaven and earth. The mirror of the water here polarizes the symbol of the center. Now this phenomenon of the mirror at the centre of the structure of the templum is also central to the metaphysics professed by a whole lineage of Iranian philosophers . . .
*
Tom Cheetham, author of an important series of books about Corbin and his ideas, writes that images of the temple--Imago Templi--should be understood as both physical-architectural spaces, and as symbolic images which invoke the internal, Imaginal temple, the sacred place within the body: the Heart, or Soul, or Psyche.
All True Symbols, Corbin tells us, originate from within the mundus Imaginalis, the Imaginal world--which is an "intermediate" ineffable "place" existing between the inner world and the outer sensible world of material substances. The Imaginal world is the "place" where Heaven and Earth merge; it is the "place" where matter transforms into the spiritual, and where the spiritual transforms into matter.
*
The symbol is at the very heart and center of my Creative Process in photography. The symbolic photograph serves the same function as a Temple: it is a sacred image--a pictorial space--in which I enter Imaginally into the very center of my own Heart where I can then dialogue (pray, contemplate) silently with my own divine Self. In this merging of Self and Image I can experience a personal-psychic-spiritual transformation in which an unveiling of "Sacred Knowledge" occurs within me. This knowledge is an ineffable unfolding of the inner Self of all, a knowledge which had pre-existed within me but which had become hidden, inaccessible and thus unknown to me.
True living symbols are images radiant with grace, the Creative Power of the Universe. It is the same divine energy which Creates and Destroys the entire Universe over and over again in a perpetual recurrence of Creation. Also, it is grace which "holds the universe together."
In the thirty-plus years I've been practicing Siddha Yoga Meditation, I have heard my teacher Gurumayi Chidilasananda, and her teacher Swami Muktananda, often use the term Chiti Shakti when speaking about grace, the divine Creative Energy which flows through everything, including the human body and those most holy Temples that exist throughout the world. Indeed, the human body is considered "the great temple of the inner Self."
Do not see your body just from the outside. Go within and experience the energy which flows through the body and allows every cell to pulsate, to live, the energy which allows every thought and emotion to fructify, which is also the energy which holds the universe together. Swami Chidvilasananda, Darshan #23
The body has been man's companion and friend through many births, through many different journeys of pain and happiness. . . . It is the ladder to the city of liberation; it is the great temple of the inner Self. In the innermost part of this bodily temple, God, the Lord of love, lives as the inner Self. Swami Muktananda, Darshan #23
The human mind often finds it difficult to absorb these kinds of ancient teachings; we feel more at home in other physical-sensible forms of the Temple such as a forest, a church or temple. Within the inner most part of our bodily temple--the very Center of our Being--there is indeed a most sacred place which is ofter referred to as the Heart. And when we find a way of entering into the Heart--perhaps through some form of spiritual practice, perhaps by entering a church or temple, or perhaps through the contemplation of symbolic images or Icons . . . a silent dialogue occurs between our self and the divine Self. In the Center of every form of the Templum it is "God seeking God;" it is "God speaking with God;" it is "God discovering God" . . . accomplishing of "the miracle of the One Thing."
*
The Creative energy, or grace of the divine Self flows--like an "underground River"--through every Created thing, and most noticeably those objects, places and images which function as grace-filled symbols. The three symmetrical photographs you'll be seeing in this project are--for me--images radiant with grace. The images are related in form and character to many other kinds of the Imago Templi which Corbin and Cheetham have written about. For example, the mandala and the yantra are typically symmetrical, circular or square images, images that symbolize the Unity of Being. They provide the contemplator with a visual road map that leads him or her into the "heart" or center of the image. This Imaginal movement within the image correspondingly transports the contemplator into the center (the Heart) of his or her own Being. The experience of contemplation can have a profoundly healing affect upon what CG Jung has referred to as "modern-man's divided, fragmented" psyche or soul.
*
Tom Cheetham has created a website devoted to Corbin and his ideas, The Legacy of Henry Corbin, and I was able to find there a complete online version of "Emblematic Cities." Here is another important passage from Corbin's essay:
The [mosque's] four cardinal points (north, south, east and west) are given by the four iwans [vaulted portal openings onto the mosque's courtyard]. These remain horizontal; it is the mirror which gives the vertical dimension, from the nadir to the zenith. . .
Let us now transpose [the] idea of a virtual image to the plane of a mystical reflection. To transpose the image of virtuality into actuality is to accomplish the very operation which, for the metaphysicians of the school of Sohravardi, signifies penetration into the mundus Imaginalis [the Imaginal world] . . .
The phenomenon of the mirror enables us to understand the internal dimensions of an object or a building situated in the space of this world, because it leads us to grasp its spiritual dimension, the metaphysical image which precedes and shapes all empirical perception. . . To see things in the mirror is, as an Iranian Sheikh expressed it, 'to see things in Hurqalya, highest of the mystic [Emblematic] cities of the mundus Imaginalis. The mirror simply shows us the way to enter [the Imaginal world, the human Heart, the dwelling place of the divine Self.] Henry Corbin,"Emblematic Cities"
*
After reading and contemplating Corbin's writings about the water-mirror in the Temple I recognized a relationship between those ideas and the symmetrical photographs I had been making since 2011. I felt a deep desire to respond to Corbin's ideas visually with some photographs. But . . . at first I had no idea about how to proceed.
And yet, as so often happens in my Creative Process, eventually a spontaneous-intuitive manifestation of grace gifted me with the three symmetrical images I am presenting here, below. Amazingly, the source images, or "straight photographs" with which I constructed the three symmetrical photographs, were made within minutes of each other one day in October 2015. I first published the images--along with text--in November, 2015 in a project entitled "As Above, So Below : Mirror In the Temple." I revised that project--in September and October, 2018. It has become the second chapter in the WATER project, entitled The Mirror in the Temple.
I will explain in the Commentaries section, following the presentation of photographs, how the images came into being, how I see them in relationship to the ideas I have introduced here, and then I will present some additional, related quotations from a series of lectures Corbin gave entitled Temple and Contemplation.
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Three
Symmetrical Photographs
A Visual Sequence:
"Water-Mirror In the Temple"
"Water-Mirror In the Temple"
Image #1 Mirror In the Temple ~ Symmetrical Photograph: Vaulted Ceiling
Image #2 Mirror In the Temple ~ Symmetrical Photograph: Bird Bath - Water Mirror
Image #3 Mirror In the Temple ~ Symmetrical Photograph: Reflections in a door
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Commentaries
on
the photographs
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click on the images to enlarge
Image #1 Vaulted Ceiling
For this, the first symmetrical photograph in the sequence of three, I took a photograph of the vaulted ceiling above our living room. I was drawn to making the exposure by a strange blue light that was being reflecting up onto the ceiling near the ceiling fan. I had never seen this kind of light on the ceiling before; it seemed to me a rather mysterious occurrence. I could not see where the light was coming from.
There is an interesting synchronistic correspondence for me between the vaulted ceiling that served as the subject matter for this image and Corbin's writings in his essay "Emblematic Cities" about the dome of the Templum; the dome of heaven. For when I looked up at the unusual colored light on the ceiling, it occurred to me then that the appearance had the character of a blue sky reflected in water.
There is an interesting synchronistic correspondence for me between the vaulted ceiling that served as the subject matter for this image and Corbin's writings in his essay "Emblematic Cities" about the dome of the Templum; the dome of heaven. For when I looked up at the unusual colored light on the ceiling, it occurred to me then that the appearance had the character of a blue sky reflected in water.
The picture's soft, round, blue corona is gently, seductively inviting; though I was looking up when I took the picture, as I view the image now I now feel suspended-over and looking down at a rather intimate body of water. I feel as though I want to give myself to the space, the light, its soft blue energy. I want to merge into it.
The space is essentially feminine in nature. Perhaps I am hovering over a womb of water. ~ And what is that vertical shape emerging from the center of the space? That gentle, pale blue form looks like a star, perhaps a gem, whose radiant light is being dimmed by a veil. Perhaps the vertical form symbolizes the soul of a child about to be born; perhaps it's a bird . . . "whose wings were palest blue":
The lake lay blue below the hill.
O're it, as I looked, there flew
Across the waters, cold and still,
A bird whose wings were palest blue.
The sky above was blue at last.
The sky beneath me, blue in blue.
A moment, ere the bird had passed.
It caught his image as he flew.
Mary Coleridge (1861-1907)
Look, the bliss I sought for years and years,
Now flashes upon my sight.
There in a temple wombed in earth,
I've seen a gem, and cast my past behind me forever.
Unnamed Poet Saint, quoted by Swami Chidvilasananda in Darshan #67
Note: Regarding the poetic line I've seen a gem, and cast my past behind me forever,
I invite you to visit my project entitled The Blue Pearl.
Note: Regarding the poetic line I've seen a gem, and cast my past behind me forever,
I invite you to visit my project entitled The Blue Pearl.
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click on the images to enlarge
Image #2 The "Water Mirror"
In the process of photographing the bird bath I experienced a brief moment of recognition in which I became aware that I was making the exposure because of the writings I had read by Corbin regarding the mirror in the temple. However, I thought nothing more about it until much later when I began experimenting with the image--applying the four-fold symmetrical process to it.
The resulting symmetrical image was quite a surprise to me. I find it strangely haunting; and its relationship to the other two transformed images forms a larger triadic visual gestalt.
The basin is suspended in a space that seems to me best defined as "irrational." The distance between the basin and the background of green mowed lawn is inexplicable. As I study the image more carefully I realize I feel suspended over the basin in a way that is similar to my experience of the vaulted ceiling symmetrical image.
The bird-like shadows above and below the egg-like shape of the basin seem menacing; they are like totem-figures whose presence is for the protection of this "sacred font." The light that has cast their shadow-forms is bi-directional, and yet the shadow I expect to see cast by the basin's column (upon which the basin must surly be standing) . . . is absent! Perhaps the basin has no supporting column after all; perhaps the basin is not connected to the earth; perhaps it is indeed suspended in space.
Upon closer viewing of the basin (click on the image) I can see four reflections of the sun in the water, and under the water, on the basin's floor, there are markings or designs which appear to be a cryptic text, or illuminations of an ancient manuscript. Perhaps the basin has indeed been used for sacred rituals. Perhaps the text and designs have been taken from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Tresmegistus, or an illuminated Qur'an.
This symmetrical image represents an ineffable transformation that has unveiled a "spiritual dimension" hidden within the object (and the place) originally photographed.
Many years ago I made a series of thing-centered photographs which this symmetrical photograph reminds me of. I mention this here because of what Corbin wrote in regards to "the internal spiritual dimensions of objects." The passage, quoted earlier above, is worthy of being repeated once again:
The phenomenon of the mirror enables us to understand the internal dimensions of an object or a building situated in the space of this world, because it leads us to grasp its spiritual dimension, the metaphysical image which precedes and shapes all empirical perception . . .
The resulting symmetrical image was quite a surprise to me. I find it strangely haunting; and its relationship to the other two transformed images forms a larger triadic visual gestalt.
The basin is suspended in a space that seems to me best defined as "irrational." The distance between the basin and the background of green mowed lawn is inexplicable. As I study the image more carefully I realize I feel suspended over the basin in a way that is similar to my experience of the vaulted ceiling symmetrical image.
The bird-like shadows above and below the egg-like shape of the basin seem menacing; they are like totem-figures whose presence is for the protection of this "sacred font." The light that has cast their shadow-forms is bi-directional, and yet the shadow I expect to see cast by the basin's column (upon which the basin must surly be standing) . . . is absent! Perhaps the basin has no supporting column after all; perhaps the basin is not connected to the earth; perhaps it is indeed suspended in space.
Upon closer viewing of the basin (click on the image) I can see four reflections of the sun in the water, and under the water, on the basin's floor, there are markings or designs which appear to be a cryptic text, or illuminations of an ancient manuscript. Perhaps the basin has indeed been used for sacred rituals. Perhaps the text and designs have been taken from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Tresmegistus, or an illuminated Qur'an.
This symmetrical image represents an ineffable transformation that has unveiled a "spiritual dimension" hidden within the object (and the place) originally photographed.
*
Many years ago I made a series of thing-centered photographs which this symmetrical photograph reminds me of. I mention this here because of what Corbin wrote in regards to "the internal spiritual dimensions of objects." The passage, quoted earlier above, is worthy of being repeated once again:
The phenomenon of the mirror enables us to understand the internal dimensions of an object or a building situated in the space of this world, because it leads us to grasp its spiritual dimension, the metaphysical image which precedes and shapes all empirical perception . . .
The "phenomenon" Corbin is referring to is the reflected image of the mosque's dome in the water-mirror, an image which reflects the "dome of heaven," the "real dome" of the Templum. Corbin tells us "to see things in the mirror" is to enter the "intermediary" Imaginal world where "physical things become spiritual, and where spiritual things become physical."
It seems appropriate to pause here a moment and bring attention back to the fact that the symmetrical photographs are image constructions. They consist of four repeated source images, each mirroring the other--above and below, left and right--and conjoining at the very center-point of the image as a whole. The invisible space of the center-point is a profound mystery, it is the Origin of the image, the ineffable space of the Imaginal world, the space in-between where symbols are born--images which unveil the invisible nature of Unitary Reality.
When I look at this symmetrical photograph I am no longer looking at a picture of a bird bath; rather I am--in Corbin's terms--experiencing a symbolic unveiling of that object's spiritual-vertical dimension, its ungrounded metaphysical-archetypal image, the image which "precedes and shapes all empirical perception . . ."
*
This symmetrical photograph transposes (for me) to the "water-mirror" that "reflected" the strange, heavenly blue light up onto the vaulted ceiling of my living room; it is an image which transposes (for me) to Corbin's water-mirror in the center of the Templum; it is an image which transposes (for me) to Claudel's underground lake in the bottom of a sacred basin in his visionary Underground Church; and the image transposes (for me) to the ritual-alchemical vessel in which the primordial sound of unity, OM becomes materialized into multiple letters, then the letters are united into words, and the words are turned into all the corresponding things in "heaven" and on "earth" . . . and which finally become married, re-united once again . . . accomplishing the alchemical miracle of the "One Thing."
That which is Below corresponds
to that which is Above,
and that which is Above corresponds
to that which is Below,
to accomplish the miracle of
the "One Thing"
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The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus
Alchemical Treatise
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click on the images to enlarge
Image #3 Reflections in a door
This luminous, mysterious image is for me a visual explication on Corbin's statement regarding the "vertical dimension of a space" and the "plane of a mystical reflection" which gives entrance into the in-between, Intermediate Imaginal World of "the mundus Imaginalis." It also completes a spatial progression initiated by the first two images, in the first of which I am looking up into the "heavens," a vaulted ceiling; and in the second, an image in which I am looking down into a "water-mirror." In this third image I am looking directly into the infinite pre-eternal space between the two other images; that ineffable space of the Heart, the inner divine Self which dwells in all things.
The image contains an infinitely vast horizontal space which shimmers behind a vibrant column or ladder of prismatic light. This vertical presence of other-worldly light invokes an angelic presence for me. (See my project The Angels.)
*
As I look at the shimmering "ladder" of light in this symmetrical image, I notice that it connects two corresponding-mirroring diamond shapes at the top and bottom of the image. These shapes could symbolize "heaven" and "earth," and the "ladder of light" can be associated with Corbin's Imago Templi which connects corresponding opposites.
At the very center of the picture, in the foreground space which intersects the background space, there are two lines of light--one vertical, one horizontal. These light lines intersect each other at the very center-point of each line. Their point of intersection is also the center of the image as a whole. The lines of light also have (for me) the character or presence of a "celestial messenger." This is to say, they signify at once "a place of vision" and an Angel which is pronouncing to the world the illuminated Truth: the Unity of Being.
I am attracted to the series of stacked lines just above and below the two diamond shapes. They remind me of ripples in a pool of water, like those one might see in the round basin of an Islamic garden basin or some other shape of reflecting pool, a pool perpetually being renewed with fresh flowing water from an underground river or mountain stream.
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Corbin, in his lecture series "Temple and Contemplation" also speaks about the relationship between the act of contemplation and the sacred presence that pervades the Temple. The Templum, besides being a "place of vision" is as well an organ of vision and a dwelling-place of the divine.
This symmetrical image--and indeed all images which function as True Symbols--is a kind of "spiritual body" or sacred "vessel," the dwelling place (Templum) of divine grace. Symbolic images overflow with grace; they are radiant with the Creative Energy (Chiti Shakti) which Creates the universe, which holds the universe together, and which dissolves the universe.
Symbolic photographs are also vehicles of vision, images which unveil visual worlds otherwise invisible to the ordinary eye, images inaccessible to the viewer except via the photographs.
This symmetrical image--and indeed all images which function as True Symbols--is a kind of "spiritual body" or sacred "vessel," the dwelling place (Templum) of divine grace. Symbolic images overflow with grace; they are radiant with the Creative Energy (Chiti Shakti) which Creates the universe, which holds the universe together, and which dissolves the universe.
Symbolic photographs are also vehicles of vision, images which unveil visual worlds otherwise invisible to the ordinary eye, images inaccessible to the viewer except via the photographs.
The deepest meanings of any image which functions as a symbol can be fully engaged, absorbed and integrated into one's Self only when one gives oneself to the image in a ritual-like process called contemplation. Contemplation is a yogic practice, and integral part of the alchemical process, a necessary part of any Creative Process. Corbin elaborates upon the concept of Contemplation in his fifth "Temple and Contemplation" lecture. I will conclude this project with some quotations from that lecture.
*
When I contemplate a photograph which functions for me as a symbol, I open my entire Being to the image, allowing its presence, its creative energy (shakti) to eventually become Centered within my Heart. There, in the silence of the Heart, I absorb the grace embodied within the image. This process is akin to "listening." An image that functions for me as a symbol has something to say to me, something I need to hear, a meaning which is nothing less than sacred, consecrated knowledge, knowledge that words cannot convey. As this "silent dialogue" unfolds I somehow receive what it is that wants to be given. This unsayable knowledge helps return me--in a state of stillness and silence and heightened consciousness--to the Origin of all that is and is not: the cosmic Temple, the divine inner Self.
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The very act of photographing and creating photographs can be a form of contemplation in itself. The three images in this project give visual form to the ideas that inspired the work, those ideas the Corbin wrote about and which I was trying to integrate through my own personal experience. The practice of contemplating the images themselves is essential in order to fully imbibe the meaning of the images and completes the Creative Process. Symbols cannot be interpreted: their meanings are multi-layered and open-ended. Commentary must not be confused with the process of contemplating symbols. Symbols are overflowing images of grace; the grace must be internalized, absorbed and allowed to illuminate one's innermost sacred spaces within one's Being.
I will close this project with the words of Henry Corbin which explains what it means to contemplate. The text excerpts come from his fifth lecture in the series which as a whole is entitled "Temple and Contemplation."
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Henry Corbin
Contemplation & the Sacred, Cosmic Temple
The term [contemplate] was actually used above all to designate the field of Heaven, the expanse of the open Heaven where the flight of birds could be observed and interpreted.
The lake lay blue below the hill.
O're it, as I looked, there flew
Across the waters, cold and still,
A bird whose wings were palest blue.
The sky above was blue at last.
The sky beneath me, blue in blue.
A moment, ere the bird had passed.
It caught his image as he flew.
Mary Coleridge (18861-1907)
In order for the material Temple and the immaterial Temple [Imago Templi] to symbolize with each other, both of them need to be lifted out of the isolation of a world without correspondence, and to be perceived on the level "where bodies are spiritualized and where spirits take on body" (Muhsin Fayd): the level, that is, of the spiritual body. This in itself is the definition of the Imaginal world, the world where . . . the Imago Templi is made manifest [and where, as Corbin has said, all symbols originate] click here to see a pdf of Corbin's lecture series "Temple and Contemplation
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This project, first published in November, 2015 with the title "As Above- So Below"
has been revised and published as part 2 of the WATER project.
I announced this project in the "Latest Addition"
section of my website's Welcome Page on
October 2, 2018
Other Related Links
The Sacred Art Photography Projects click here to see the complete list
"An Imaginary Book" (2011-13)
The Angels (2014)
The Photograph As Icon (2014-15)
Photography and Yoga (2015)
Field of Vision (2015)
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.
