Returning Home
~ Interiorization ~
Photographs of Corners, Things, Hanging
Things, Birds, the Meadow, and a Flower
Images inspired by an escalating Pandemic
click on the image to enlarge
Introduction
The entire world is turning upside-down. Topsy-turvy. Things have gotten much worse since I created my project STAY HOME, published May 5, 2020. I feel like a masked stranger in a strange land. I have become over-attendant to all the craziness, and once again I have withdrawn, turned inside, taken refuge in secluded spaces free of disease, lies, threats and manipulations, power grabs, etc. I have curled up in a corner in an abode which is as much inside me as I am in it; an abode that invites me to return--again and again--to a more True and peaceful mode of being.
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After I completed my Contemplation project last month, and then extensively revised one of my earliest blog projects, A Personal History of Photography (both of which involved no new photographs, but lots of writing) I felt desperate to get my camera out of its drawer and make some new photographs. Part of me wanted to get out in the world with my camera, like in days of old, but finally I simply could not do that; the urge to stay home, within the safe and saner boundaries of my private world, was too strong. Thus, for nearly a week, and in a disciplined manner, I spent several minutes each day wandering around inside my house--in the basement, on the main floor, and in the garage--with my camera, looking for images. And one day, I ventured outside and walked around our house with my camera. I took a photograph of a flower which transformed, auspiciously, into an Icon.
In some obvious ways this project is an extension of my STAY HOME project, though none of those photographs were made in the basement. In the present project nine of the twenty images were made in the basement.
Regarding the Basement
In Gaston Bachelard's introduction to his excellent book The Poetics of Space he suggests that images involving the house represent a "topography of our intimate being . . . a tool for analysis of the human soul." He says "Our soul is an abode . . . the house images move in both directions: they are in us as much as we are in them." In this regard the basement is "first and foremost the dark entity of the house, the one that partakes of subterranean [unconscious] forces. . . . The cellar dreamer knows that the walls of the cellar are buried . . . they have the entire earth behind them."
After selecting the pictures for this project I noticed that many of them (8 of the 20) included corner spaces, all of which are pervaded by darker tonalities that seem inhabited by a presence, something (or someone). Bachelard devoted an entire chapter to "Corners" in The Poetics of Space, and when I revisited that chapter I found these particularly fascinating excerpts:
Our house is our corner of the world.
The corner is a sort of half-box, part walls, part door.
Every corner in a house, every angle in a room, every inch of secluded space in which we like to hide, or withdraw into ourselves, is a symbol of solitude for the imagination.
The corner is a haven that ensures us one of the things we prize most highly--immobility.
I would have preferred that Bachelard (or the translator) use of the word "stillness" instead of "immobility." In my experience, it is stillness of the mind that provides me with what I "prize most highly."
Corner spaces certainly offer an introvert (like myself) both protection from the outer world and an invitation into the infinite space of stillness, silence and grace of my own self. A corner is an in between space, the point where two adjacent walls meet. It is a symbol for a transcendent Place which has received the name Makom; and it's what Henry Corbin calls an "interworld," the Imaginal World. In this regard, one could say the photographs in this project are "corners," images which unveil my own hidden presence found lurking inside the spaces (and things) I have photographed. Later, after the presentation of the twenty photographs I will be writing more about Corbin's Imaginal World.
This project represents an Imaginal journey which begins in the dark spaces of my basement and then moves up to the main floor (the only other floor in our house) which in the late afternoon becomes flooded with the golden light of the setting sun. One of my photographs (Image #17) shows the sun making its descent behind the woods which borders the meadow behind our house on the west side, and our back yard on the east side. I was standing on our deck, looking out over the meadow, and when I turned to go back inside the house I saw the setting sun reflected in the glass sliding door. If you look closely (you can click on the image to enlarge it) you will see my wife, Gloria, standing behind the glass door, beside the double image of the sun.
Image #17
Following the presentation of the photographs I will continue this Introduction with some theoretical discussion regarding the title of this project, Retuning Home, and then some additional commentary on other selected photographs in the project.
Note: you can click on the images (once, twice) to see
them larger and against a black background.
The
Photographs
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#1 Returning Home : Interiorization Basement corner, print boxes, blue curtain
#2 Returning Home : Interiorization Two corners, basement window ledge and folded paper towel
#3 Returning Home : Interiorization Corner, arching dehumidifier hose going into the basement bathroom
#4 Returning Home : Interiorization Hanging circle near a corner in my basement studio
#5 Returning Home : Interiorization Hanging curtain, corner of Gloria's basement ceramic studio
#6 Returning Home : Interiorization Basement Corner with dried flowers
#7 Returning Home : Interiorization Hanging garlics in the garage
#8 Returning Home : Interiorization Hanging circles in Gloria's ceramic studio
#9 Returning Home : Interiorization Toilet Spray Bottle
#10 Returning Home : Interiorization House plant, living room, ledge, stairway to the basement
#11 Returning Home : Interiorization Hanging hand towel on shower curtain rod
#12 Returning Home : Interiorization Hanging lamp on 2x4" wood stud in the furnace room
#13 Returning Home Basement Closet : the Golden Light of the setting sun reflected in a cookie tin
#14 Returning Home : Interiorization Hanging picture frame, prismatic light patterns in the Corner of the foyer
#15 Kitchen Corner, Shadows of hanging chime, roll of paper towels, a ruler, a stack of CDs, the photographer
#16 Returning Home Shaded Picture Window flooded with sunlight, reading magnifier & shadow of bird in flight
#17 Returning Home Reflection of the setting sun & a figure holding an envelope behind the opened sliding door
#18 Returning Home Bird ascending into the night sky & reflection of the living room lamp in the picture window
#19 Returning Home : Interiorization The pink light of dawn and fog over the north meadow pond
Visual
~ Epilogue ~
#20 Returning Home : Interiorization Flower Icon (symmetrical photograph)
Returning Home
The title of this project Returning Home was inspired by some ideas that Tom Cheetham explored in his book The World Turned Inside Out - Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism. I have returned to this book over and over again, and I have referred to it often in my Sacred Art Photography Projects. I will be drawing several excerpts from the book in which he has quoted from the writings of Henry Corbin (1903-1979) who in his long and productive life as an extraordinary scholar of many of the worlds great religious traditions, wrote numerous essays, lectures and books which shed new light especially on the mystical aspects of Islam, that is to say, Sufism.
Corbin is not easy to read (though it is always rewarding to make the effort), thus I offer my gratitude to Tom Cheetham for his series of books on Corbin which prepared me for reading Corbin directly. Even after my reading several of Corbin's books I have continued to re-read Cheetham which, with each visit, gifts me with new and renewed insights. (Tom Cheetham's other three books in his Corbin series are: Green Man, Earth Angel; After Prophecy-Invitation to a Recital; and All the World An Icon)
Interiorization / Inside Out
In the fourth chapter of The World Turned Inside Out, which is entitled "Coming Home" Cheetham focuses on several of Corbin's major themes including interiorization, the soul, and the Imaginal World. (Also in chapter 4 he introduces important material on Corbin's scholarly study of Angles, but he goes into the subject in much greater depth in two later chapters.)
When we intuitively-imaginatively enter into the interior of the things of the outer world (and indeed all outer things are inhabited by hidden spiritual presence) something quite remarkable happens, says Corbin: the within is "turned inside out" and the outside becomes spiritual. "The soul," writes Cheetham, "finds that it was a stranger in the world in which it had lived, and now it has come home." The following words are Henry Corbin's as quoted by Cheetham:
It is a matter of entering, passing into the interior and, in passing into the interior, of finding oneself, paradoxically, outside . . . The relationship involved is essentially that of the external, the visible, the exoteric . . . and the internal, the invisible, the esoteric . . . or the natural and the spiritual world. To depart . . . to leave the external or natural appearances that enclose the hidden realities . . . this step is made in order for the Stranger, the gnostic, to return home . . .
But an odd thing happens: once this transition is accomplished, it turns out that henceforth this reality, previously internal and hidden, is revealed to be enveloping, surrounding, containing what was first of all external and visible, since by means of interiorization one has departed from that external reality. Henceforth it is spiritual reality that . . . contains the reality called material. Corbin, from his essay Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam
The "Return Home" requires turning inside and entering the realm of the sacred, the realm of the human Heart which is the abode of Truth, the divine Presence, the Universal Soul. Escape from the dualistic web of outer-world entrapments occurs, Cheetham tells us, through the process of spiritualizing the outer world rather than rejecting it; and in doing so, we enter the realm of the infinite, the realm of the timeless, and thus become free of the "terrors of history." Cheetham writes: "Everything depends upon the interiorization and true interpretation of Revelation. Visible reality has its complement, its completion, in the other world."
Corbin's "bridge" to the "other world," writes Cheetham, "is the transformation of the sensory world into symbols, into open-ended mysteries that shatter, engage, and transform the entire being of the creature. Its metaphysical grounding is provided by the experience of creation as theophany, as the realization of Divine Compassion."
The Imaginal World, or Interworld
Corbin's "other world" is an intermediary world, or interworld, "where the spiritual takes body and the body becomes spiritual." Corbin calls this realm which exists between spirit and matter the Imaginal World, and it is within this infinitely vast sacred place that True living Symbols are born. Symbols are images of Unitary Reality, images celebrating the Oneness of Being, images which conjoin, and hold in balance and equilibrium, the corresponding inner and the outer - physical and the spiritual worlds.
The Symbol, The Heart, the Journey Home
Beholding and interiorizing a True, living Symbol is an Imaginal journey which can transport the individual soul Home, to its Origin: the Universal Soul, the Creator. The True, living Symbol is the Imaginal embodiment of the the supreme and eternal Truth: the contemplator's own divinity which forever dwells within the inmost depths of the human Heart and everything in the "outer world." Each human Being is an embodiment of the Universal Soul, the supreme Self. Turning within, and then turning that world inside out is a process of inner blossoming, a soul's inner journey, its Return Home which reaches completion when it merges, reunites, with the Universal Soul.
The Heart and its Creative Power
One of Corbin's most important and most read books, Alone With the Alone : Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn'Arabi is a presentation and interpretation of the ideas of the great 12th century Muslim scholar, mystic, poet and philosopher Ibn'Arabi. Cheetham tells us that in the doctrine of this great Sufi teacher, "it is the Heart that is the organ most closely linked to the mystical functions of the Imagination," and the power of the Heart is known in Sufism as himma. Cheetham quotes Corbin, here, from Alone with the Alone:
Himma is a word whose content is perhaps best suggested by the Greek word enthymesis, which signifies the act of meditating, conceiving, imagining, projecting, ardently desiring--in other words, of having (something) present in the thymos, [the Greek word] which is vital force, soul, heart, intention, thought, desire . . . It is the force of an intention so powerful as to project and realize ("essentiate") a being external to the being who conceives the intention . . . Corbin, from Alone With the Alone
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Islam's Himma is very similar to the sanskrit term Kunalini Shakti, which means in the yoga that I practice "the Spiritual-Creative Power of the Universe." Shakti is a very real presence in my life, and as an artist I often refer to it as "the grace of my Creative Process."
For example, when I have my camera in hand, and I'm actively looking for photographic images, I turn my seeing inward; I enter a visionary mode of perception which I (and other) photographers have referred to as "seeing photographically." This is a kind of seeing that is based in the Heart, or in Corbin's terminology, from inside the Interworld, the Imaginal Word. This kind of seeing is what Corbin calls Theophanic, which is seeing God's presence within the things and spaces in the outer world. It is an extraordinary kind of seeing that is filtered through the "eyes of the Heart" and through the intuitively understood transformative potentialities of the photographic medium. This grace-filled Creative mode of seeing is what Corbin would call Active Imagination, a visionary kind of seeing that turns the world inside out, a kind of seeing that unveils the hidden, divine presence in the things of the outer, created world.
If this visionary experience, this interiorization of the outer world, can be successfully translated into its equivalent, articulate visual-photographic form, what we then have is an epiphanic visual revelation of the conjunction of corresponding images of the inner and outer, spiritual and physical worlds. Such a photographic image, which unveils and celebrates the Oneness of Being, is what I call a Symbolic Photograph. It is an extraordinary image which is radiantly alive with transformative divine creative energy: himma, grace, shakti, the Light of Consciousness.
Contemplation : Interiorizaton of the Symbolic Image
The making of symbolic images is not the end of the Creative Process, however; the "Return Home" has indeed begun, but another step (at least) is required: the symbolic image must be interiorized, taken to Heart through the meditative practice called Contemplation. The practice, which is supported by himma or grace, requires that the contemplator imaginatively enter into the image, and then turn the image inside out and then integrate the ineffable knowledge, the himma that has become embodied by the symbol. Such a dynamic creative act is possible when it is charged with an intense longing and intention overflowing with pure love.
When the contemplator installs or interiorizes the True, living symbolic image inside his or her Heart--that most sacred of all places, which is pervaded by the divine Presence, the supreme Self--the power, the grace or himma of both the image and the contemplation process affects a transformation within the contemplator; it transports the contemplator's soul--Imaginally--to its divine Origin, the Universal Soul, a "place" unique to each individual soul according to its beliefs, capacity, temperament, capabilities, etc.
To conclude this section, I want to offer one last quote, by Corbin, from Cheetham's book The World Turned Inside Out:
Through the redemptive path of pure love, the consciousness of the fidele [the faithful lover of God] becomes that of the mystic who knows that he is the eye with which God contemplates himself; that he himself in his being, is the witness by which God witnesses himself, the revelation by which the Hidden Treasure reveals itself to itself. Henry Corbin, as quoted in Cheetham, The World Turned Inside Out
Commentary
on selected photographs
~ Birds ~
and the
Imaginal World
Birds are magical, Angelic beings, and though it is (practically) impossible for me to photograph them, I have found ways to make Symbolic images that are alive with the magic and divine presence of birds, photographs which invite and activate my imagination to soaring heights.
We have three bird feeders behind our house: one is hanging on a low branch of the crab apple tree in our back yard; one is hanging on a metal pole in our back yard where the borders of the back yard and the meadow meet and overlap: and the third is hanging off and away from the railing of our back deck, which is high above the ground and looks out over the meadow and the woods just beyond. ~ I have been watching the birds very closely this year; they have invented remarkable ways of traveling safely and expediently from one feeder to the next and then on to their homes across the meadow. The birds are wonderfully, naturally graceful and clever, agile and fast; they work hard, with intense focus all day long and every day. After they get their fair share of the sunflower seeds, they fly off, dissolving into space, as they enter the woods beyond the meadow and at last rest in their round homes.
(Image #18) "Bird" ascending into the night sky; lamp reflection in the picture window
In this photograph, a lamp is glowing with a warm golden light as if suspended against the darkness of the clouds and the woods in the background. ~ I am inside our house looking out through the picture window; the lamp--a reflection on the inside surface of the glass-- appears to be illuminating the sky. ~ At the top of the picture frame a bird is soaring with outstretched wings into the darkening evening sky. And below it, I see two bird-like cloud formations which echo its form: the most obvious one is just beneath the bird; the other cloud-bird formation is just above the lamp. ~ The three "birds" are beginning their return flight Home, ascending gracefully into the fading light.
(Image #13) "Bird" images--designs on a cookie tin
As I was I journeying through my house one late afternoon, looking everywhere for things and spaces to photograph--to inhabit imaginatively, I opened a basement closest door and saw an intense golden light shining in the metallic surface of a cookie tin (which I later discovered contained sewing needles, thread, buttons and the like). The light, which seemed to illuminate the entire closet, was a reflection of the setting sun. ~ Later, as I was editing the photographs for this project, I saw something in this image, in the tin, that I hadn't noticed earlier when I made the photograph: the little designs on the lid of cookie tin appeared to me as images of birds in flight.
I then noticed the two silvery horizontal lines on the body of the tin and the way similar lines are exist repeatedly, above and below the tin. The three sets of parallel lines form an Imaginal ladder that runs vertically through the dark space of the image. ~ If you click on the image and see it enlarged against a black background, everything in the darker spaces of the image will become more visible, including (for those of you who have not yet been able to perceive it) a conference of letters and its message anxiously awaiting to emerge into your awareness.
(Image #9) "Bird" in the form of a spray bottle
The "bird" in this photograph is perched, very still, on top of a toilet tank lid. It looks as if it is checking out the piece of curtain hanging down from the edge of the photograph. It's head appears to be pulled back a little, perhaps in a gesture of being careful not to get too close too quickly to whatever it is that has perked its curiosity. ~ It is a beautiful bird, with a milky white body and a dark head. ~ I like the shapes of light in the smooth white porcelain surface; they look like a bird's luminous foot prints that were left behind as the Imaginal Bird hopped across the tank's lid. ~ The soft warm tones of grey pervading the entire image seem illuminated from within, perhaps by the light inside the porcelain.
In this Thing Centered Photograph there is a respectful, gentle distance, between myself and the "bird," but an air of intimacy is present, perhaps in the softness of the light. The image invites me to come closer, to enter and inhabit the space with the bird. ~ In imaginatively entering the image I become part of the quiet, radiant atmosphere that pervades the image. I feel the "bird's" presence yearning to speak to me. It has something important to say.
"Hanging Things"
(Image #7) "Bird" in the form of a bundle of hanging garlics
This photograph is simultaneously a "thing" image, a "bird" image, and a "hanging" image. My wife, Gloria had hung this bundle of newly harvested garlics in the garage to dry out. I was a bit startled when I first saw this strange "thing" hanging in the half-light of dusk. It appeared to me as if it were a wild bird that had just died--or was nearly dead--hanging from a rope that had been strung around its neck. The bird's head, drooped over, has surrendered itself to its fate . . .
However, there is an abundance of energy in those two delicate, wavy lines at the top of the bird's drooping form. Are they "wings" which have a life of their own? Maybe they symbolize the bird's struggle to stay alive; or perhaps the wing's are trying desperately to carrying the dead bird away; or perhaps the "wings" represent the soul of the bird departing its dying body, readying to ascend into an Imaginal sky on its return journey Home.
(Image #4) "Hanging circle near a corner in my basement studio"
I have counted eight "Hanging" photographs in this project, but if one were to include Images #16 and #18, photographs in which we encounter soaring birds suspended in time and space, we could have ten all totaled. Each "Hanging" images "means" in it's own particular way. And the image above (Image #4) means in multiple ways, for me. The photograph could be a symbolic "self-portrait" (I am the circle hanging in silent suspension from a thin thread, patiently waiting for some many things to pass . . . such as the Coronavirus Pandemic, the Trump Pandemic, the Climate Change Pandemic, the Fossil Fuel Extraction & Burning Pandemic, and the Pandemic of Racism, the Pandemic of Police Brutality and the Pandemic of Unidentified Federal Agents in large American cities.
Image #15
Image #7
Images #15 (Shadow of hanging chimes) and Image #7 (Hanging garlics) could have been inspired by the many news programs, documentary series and films Gloria and I have been watching this month related to Black Lives Matter issues and stories. We have seen heartbreakingly tragic images of men and women hanging from ropes--images that refuse to pass away.
At first the Hanging Circle image (Image #4) seemed like it was a "Thing Photograph." (Visit this link: The Thing Centered Photographs.) However, I have not centered my attention on any one "thing," and I have not placed any one thing in particular in the center of the photograph's frame. On the contrary, the picture is more about atmosphere, and the relationship between things in the soft lit corner of my studio.
For those who like to read titles, I have entitled the image "Hanging circle near a corner in my basement studio" because I wanted to identify the photograph as an image which was made in my "basement," in my "studio," and as a "Hanging" image and a "Corner" image. (It has gotten a little ridiculous to get this caught up in "image categories;" I could just call it a "Place" photograph . . . or better still, I could just move on to writing about the photograph in more specific terms.)
I am particularly struck by the way the vertical line of the pull cord runs in perfect parallel alignment with the "line" that has been formed where the the two adjacent walls of my studio meet.
The pull-cord continues upward, beyond the picture's edge, to an light source I use for checking the color balance of my prints after they come out of the digital printer. That light brightens my studio with a color temperature close to "daylight" brilliance. ~ The light you see in this photograph is ordinary ceiling lighting which I use for maintaining a constant low level ambient light level appropriate for working with images on my computer with Photoshop software. ~ In my imagination I connect the vertical line of the pull cord to the heavier, more wavy diagonal line of the electric cord on the left in the space beyond the picture frame. ~ The two lines, and the shadows cast by the electric cord, create an evocative configuration that suggests to me a prehistoric animal. The shadows have a bristling energy which reminds me of the mane of a galloping horse; but perhaps they are "wings." (This reference to "wings" is probably due to a lingering influence of my writing about the Hanging Garlics photograph.)
In the lower right hand corner of the photograph I have become interested in the way that the table, which is touching the wall on the right side of the corner line, stops short of the wall just to the left of the corner line. This spatial event is echoed in the way that the collection of books on the table approaches--but stops short of--the end of the table.
"Why do these relationships interests me?" I don't know. I think it has something to do with the corner space, and the fact that I am looking closely at all the relationships between things in the photograph. That is to say, I would probably never have stopped to pay attention to such things in my studio if I had not made this photograph and looked at it so carefully so I could write about it . . . for my studio space (whose basement walls are "buried and have the entire earth behind them" is "corner of the universe," a cave-like sacred space in which I withdraw and curl up in myself, in my photographic images, in my writing. It is a transcendent Place (Makom, the Imaginal World) in which I become suspended in timelessness, in which everything disappears, when I become one-pointedly immersed in the grace of my Creative Process.
The Meadow
(Image #19) The pink light if dawn and fog over the north meadow pond
One morning as I was preparing to meditate a thought pooped into my mind: "It might be good to write a commentary on the one Meadow photograph in my Returning Home project." I had just completed commentaries on all the other project categories: Corners, Things, Hanging Things, Birds and the Flower Icon, it just didn't seem necessary to write about the Meadow photograph (Image #19) for I have been making meadow photographs since Gloria and I moved to Canandaigua, NY in the summer of 2008; and shortly after I created my blog, in November, 2019, I created The Meadow project and since then have been adding new meadow photographs to the ever growing collection of images in that project.
Nonetheless, just as I was gliding into mediation another thought spontaneously popped into my awareness: "The meadow is the Imaginal World, a space of infinite possibilities that exists between our back yard and the tapering woods, hills, and the sky beyond." Now THAT was a new idea to me; it just came . . . as if a gift from the Universe, a command from the grace of my Creative Process.
I love the Meadow. I am constantly watching the never-ending changes of light, color and atmosphere that fills that space and the sky above it. There are two ponds in the meadow--one in the North Meadow, the other in the South Meadow--and they often seem like "Eyes" to me, "Eyes" which reflect everything that is happening in the Meadow and in the Sky every minute of every day--liquid "Eyes" which are witnessing everything, all the time. In fact there have been moments when it has seemed to me that the ponds were looking at me!, returning my gaze.
In this image, which was made in the pink half-light of an early dawn, Fog appears to have taken on a ghostly presence which has filled the meadow's space with it's sensuously stretching ephemeral form. The leaves on the right edge of the photograph seem to be reaching out--with disappointed longing--to touch the apparitional beauty which will disappear in the full light of the rising sun.
The Flower Icon
(Image #20) Flower Icon (symmetrical photograph)
(Fig. 1 & 2) Two Russian Icons
Mother of God Assuage My Sorrows Christ Pantocrator, 1892
In my introduction to this project I quoted Gaston Bachelard who had written in his book The Poetics of Space that a corner is "a sort of half-box, part walls, part door." The idea that a corner could become a "door" reminded me of a collection of wonderful quotes I had included in my project, The Photograph as ICON, a project that included only symmetrical photographs. Here is one of those quotes; its from a book entitled Iconostasis by Pavel Florensky:
At the highest flourishing of their prayer, the ancient ascetics found that their icons were not simply windows through which they could behold the holy countenances depicted upon them, but were also doorways through which these countenances actually entered the empirical world. Florensky, Iconostasis
In The Photograph as ICON I was exploring the idea, the possibility, that a contemporary artist, such as myself, could manifest True, living Sacred Art. Surely, I thought, there is no difference in spiritual depth between a True, living symbolic photograph and the True, living images created by the Traditional artists of the great religious Traditions, such as the early Icon paintings and the magnificent illuminations that were created for and included in the early hand made Quar'ans.
For the sake of visual comparison I have placed the two Russian Icons, Mother of God and Christ Pantocrator, beneath the symmetrical Flower Icon. The formal similarities which the three images share are worth noting and contemplating.
And next, I want to compare two texts: Forensky's statement which just quoted above, and a statement by Henry Corbin which I had quoted earlier in this project. Here, again, are Corbin's words as published in Tom Cheetham's book The World Turned Inside Out - Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism:
It is a matter of entering, passing into the interior and, in passing into the interior, of finding oneself, paradoxically, outside . . . The relationship involved is essentially that of the external, the visible, the exoteric . . . and the internal, the invisible, the esoteric . . . or the natural and the spiritual world. To depart . . . to leave the external or natural appearances that enclose the hidden realities . . . . this step is made in order for the Stranger, the gnostic, to return home . . .
But an odd thing happens: once this transition is accomplished, it turns out that henceforth this reality, previously internal and hidden, is revealed to be enveloping, surrounding, containing what was first of all external and visible, since my means of interiorization one has departed from that external reality. Henceforth it is spiritual reality that . . . contains the reality called material. Henry Corbin, as quoted by Tom Cheetham in The World Turned Inside Out
I experience this "turning of the world inside out" when I make and contemplate symbolic photographs, and the experience is often more immediately noticeable for me when I am making and contemplating symmetrical photographs, such as the Flower Icon. I suspect this is so because the visual transformation of symmetrical photographs is more dramatically pronounced upon first encounter. For example, the Flower Icon has an unexpected, surprisingly stylized geometrical presence relative to the original subject--the flower--I had photographed. When I subjected the flower image to the Four-fold Symmetrical process the significant transformation it had undergone immediately signals a numinous presence: the flower's transcendent Prototype, or Primordial Archetype has been invoked and revealed. I am being confronted, face-to-face with an inner-world reality that co-exists and corresponds with the outer world form. Every shape and visual event in the four-fold symmetrical Flower Icon image is reflected in its own vertical and horizontal counterparts. When I immerse myself in this image I am essentially immersing myself in a spiritual presence, a "holy countenance," a Unitary Reality, the Oneness of Being. It is an experience very similar to that which Florensky describes in his writing about Traditional Icon images.
(Note: the Flower Icon image may also be a visual representation of what Corbin and his Sufi mystic Ibn' Arabi refer to as Recurrent Creation, a fascinating, mysterious concept that has to do with "Returning Home." It is a mind bending concept that is very challenging to satisfactorily write about and integrate. I have made an attempt, however, in this my blog project The Light of Creation : Theories of Manifestation; Recurrent Creation.)
The Flower Icon is also an example of the Thing Centered Symmetrical Photograph. It's "round" mandala-like structure directs my attention directly to the central flower form which invokes the feeling of majesty; the feeling of being in direct relation to something "Alive" and yet "Greater than Life." It's symmetrical, mirroring form has a Timeless, Essential, prehistorical presence; it's pictorial space ascends to the ineffable concept of Makom, an Imaginal Reality that exists beyond ordinary sense perception, beyond the appearances of dualism.
The eight smaller, closed bulbs symmetrically surrounding the central Flower form echo the repeating figurative forms in the traditional Russian Mother of God Icon image, and the cruciform behind the head of Christ in the Christ Pantocrator Icon (Fig. 1 & 2). I interpret the four figures as Angelic Beings. Corbin's world is filled with Angels, beings of Light which, he tells us, are essential for the Stranger's (the Traveler's) Return journey Home. According to certain religious Traditions which Corbin has studied and written about in great depth, every person has an inner Angelic Guide who will help the individual soul cross the bridge that will return it to the "other" World, the Universal Soul. (See my project The Angels and click here to check out a collection of text excerpts by Corbin and Cheetham regarding Angels)
A Collection of quotes
by
Pavel Florensky
(Note: before we get to the quotes, I want to call attention to this one important point: Florensky's words, which are directed to True, living Traditional Icon paintings, can be applied equally to the True, living symbolic photograph, both the straight photograph and the symmetrical photograph; indeed any image which functions for the contemplator as True, living symbol.)
All of the quotes that follow have been taken from the book entitled Iconostasis, which was published in 1922 by Pavel Florensky (1882-1937) a Russian Orthodox priest, theologian, philosopher, and scientist who was killed by the Soviet secret police fifteen years after Iconostasis was published.
I have separated and identified the text excerpts according to themes, and because Symbols and Icons are images which reunite the two divided parts of God's Creation--Heaven and Earth, the dark and the light, the visible and the invisible, the material and the spiritual, the outer and the inner, good and evil--I have begun this collection of stunningly beautiful, revelatory quotes (which, by the way, are in sympathy with Henry Corbin's views) with the thematic category entitled Division of All Creation Into Two:
In the beginning of Genesis--"God created the heavens and the earth"--we have always recognized as basic this division of all creation into two. Just so, when we pray the Apostle's Creed, we name God as "Maker of all things visible and invisible." These two worlds--visible and the invisible--are intimately connected, but their reciprocal differences are so immense that the inescapable question arises: what is their boundary? Their boundary separates them; yet, simultaneously, it joins them. How do we understand this boundary? Florensky, Iconostasis
Within ourselves, life in the visible world alternates with life in the invisible, and thus we experience moments . . . when the two worlds grow so very near in us that we can see their intimate touching. At such fleeting moments in us, the veil of visibility is torn apart, and through that tear--that break we are still conscious of at that moment--we can sense that the invisible world (still unearthly, still invisible) is breathing; and that both this and another world are dissolving into each other. Florensky, Iconostasis
I will set you on my breath
so you will become my life
Rumi
Dreams are the images that separate the visible world from the invisible--and at the same time join them . . . What we say about the dream holds true abut any movement from one sphere to another. In creating a work of art, the psyche or soul of the artist ascends from the earthly realm into the heavenly; there, free of all images, the soul is fed in contemplation by the essences of the highest realm, knowing the permanent noumena of things; then, satiated with this knowing, it descends again to the earthly realm. And precisely at the boundary between the two worlds, the soul's spiritual knowledge assumes the shapes of symbolic imagery: and it is these images that make permanent the work of art. Art is thus materialized dream, separated from the ordinary consciousness of waking life. Florensky, Iconostasis
A Crystal of Time In An Imaginal Space
At the point of descent and re-entry . . . the images are experiences of mystical life . . . a crystal of time in an imaginal space. [Symbolic art] . . . born of the descent, incarnates in real images the experience of the highest realm; hence this symbolic imagery attains a super-reality. Florensky, Iconostasis
Countenance : Divine Prototype
In Genesis, the image of God is differentiated from the likeness of God. . . We are beholding a countenance whenever we have before us a face that has fully realized within itself its likeness to God: and we then rightly say, "Here is the image of God," meaning: "Here is depicted the prototype of Him." When we contemplate this holy countenance, we thus behold the divine prototype; for those among us who have transfigured their faces into countenances proclaim--without a word and solely by their appearance to us--the mysteries of the invisible world. In Greek, we remember, countenance is called idea, for idea is precisely the meaning of countenance, the supremely heavenly beauty of a precise reality, the highest prototype, the ray from the source of all images: such are the meanings of idea in Plato. Florensky, Iconostasis
The wall that separates two worlds is an iconostasis. One might mean the boards or bricks or the stones. In actuality, the iconostasis is a boundary between the visible and the invisible worlds . . .
(Image #16)
Shaded Picture Window flooded with sunlight,
reading magnifier & shadow of bird in flight
We never see, however, the flights of angels . . . not even as the quick shadow of a distant bird flying between us and the sun; . . . we can experience these great motions only as the very faintest breathing. An icon is the same as this kind of heavenly vision; yet it is not the same, for the icon is the outline of a vision. A spiritual vision is not in itself an icon, for it possesses by itself full reality; an icon, however, because its outline coincides with a spiritual vision, is that vision within our consciousness . . .
Icons are . . . "visible images of mysterious and supernatural visions." An icon is therefore always either more than itself in becoming for us an image of a heavenly vision, or less than itself in failing to open our consciousness to the world beyond our senses--then it is merely a board with some paint on it . . . Florensky, Iconostasis
What Florensky Says to the Iconpainter:
"It is not you, O Iconpainter, who has created these images; it is not you who has shown to our joyous eyes these vividly alive ideas; no, they themselves have appeared within our contemplation, and you have simply taken away the obstacle that blocks their light from us, for you have helped strip away the scales that covered our spiritual sight. And since you helped us, we now see--no longer your masterpiece--but the wholly real images themselves. . . " Florensky, Iconostasis
The Icon's Light & Triumphant Beauty
Like light pouring forth light, the icon stands revealed. . . Our seeing rises above everything around us, for we recognize that we are, in this act of seeing, existing in the icon's space in eternity. "Yes" we say, ". . . my eyes cannot believe what they're seeing": such we testify to the icon's triumphant beauty overwhelming everything. Florensky, Iconostasis
Afterword
"The Space Between"
In the yoga that I practice it is said there is a space between the in-breath and the out-breath in which the two breaths become still and merge into each other. This sacred ineffable space is known as the "true heart," the space of God, supreme Consciousness, the divine Self. I believe this transcendent space is what Corbin refers to as the Interworld, or the Imaginal World, and it seems possible that this space between the breaths is also related to what the Sufis refer to as The Breath of Compassion, The Recurrence of Creation and Perpetual Ta'will.
The great yogic saint, Swami Muktananda, founder of the Siddha Yoga Path, wrote a book entitled I Am That in which he speaks from his own experience regarding the breath's natural mantra, Ham-sa, and the space between the in and out breaths. I am closing this project with some excerpts from I Am That. Here are the words of Swami Muktananda:
As you watch the breath coming in and going out, you will become aware that . . . there is a space inside where it becomes still for just a second. The breath has merged inside, and it hasn't yet started to come out; it is still in the state of merging. The space where it merges is the true heart. . . . Here the "heart" does not refer to the physical organ. . . That still space between the breaths, that space where no thoughts exist, is the true goal of [aligning the breath with the repetition of the mantra Ham-sa]. The space where "ham" merges inside, before "sa" has arisen, is the space of God, of supreme Consciousness, of the Self. . . . That space is supremely silent. In that space there are no thoughts, no imaginings, no feelings. It is completely free of forms and attributes. In that state there is no pain, no pleasure, no dullness, no ignorance. That is the state of the supreme Truth.
Swami Muktananda
NOTE: the following four blog project links are directly related to "the space between"
Color Diptychs
The Rising Sun : Prelude To An Exhibition
The Space Between Black and White
The Light of Creation (The Breath of Compassion, The Recurrence of Creation, Perpetual Ta'wil)
This project was announced on my blog's
Welcome Page August 2, 2020
I dedicate this project, with unending love and gratitude,
to Gloria on this our 51st Wedding Anniversary
"Love rests on no foundation.
It is an endless ocean
With no beginning or end"
Rumi
I dedicate this project, with unending love and gratitude,
to Gloria on this our 51st Wedding Anniversary
"Love rests on no foundation.
It is an endless ocean
With no beginning or end"
Rumi
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects from most recent to those dating back to the 1960's. Here you will also find my resume, contact information . . . and much more.
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