Category: Art

17 Feb

To Hell with Culture

Amelia Hoskins / Art, Philosophy / / 0 Comments

Image credit:  'The Arrows Mean Death' from Klee's wartime paintings news.artnet.com

PAUL KLEE - Swiss artist and director of the Bauhaus

In Paul Klee's image above, there is an abstraction of shapes, forms and lines, but there remains an overall vitality of complete difference in idea from any gone before.  Klee's ability to 'take a line for a walk' (a title of his book) has varied approaches here: The smaller images appear to be rooms with life of some kind, or symbols of fragmented civilization, likely symbolic of  war damage. One small dark hole within a grey circle could be a 'bullet hole'; while the large dark arrow, although basically a line with a head, takes on an ominous meaning, as the bringer of death (we know from the title) to the ensemble on the lower plane.   The arrow breaks out from a lined sky section which could symbolise a war plane.  There are very different war artists and if this painting can be considered amongst them, Klee has used his metaphysical awareness transposed into line, colour and pattern to create this fascinating image. The title and finished work draw us into further perception, as they are a mystery of the artist's mind; while all the while Klee is very much a designer with an eye for balance, proportion and harmony, which this picture has.

Sir Herbert Read, writer on art and philosophy, on Klee:-

"He escaped by way of nature, and there is a whole phase of his work, round about 1908-12, which might be described as impressionistic. But he knew the truth of that saying of Meister Eckhart :

" If  you seek the kernel, then you must break the shell. And likewise if you would know the reality of Nature, you must destroy the appearance, and the farther you go beyond the appearance, the nearer you will be to the essence."

Thereafter every painting by Klee becomes an attempt to express this inner essence.  But it is just at this point that he miraculously avoids the pitfall of almost all artists who seek to express the metaphysical. He does not for a moment surrender his artistic integrity—his sensibility."

Read explains abstraction from the artist's internality:

"That does not mean that his art had no relation to the world about him that he was, as we inelegantly say, an " escapist ". It is only an unintelligent and superficial realism that demands of the artist a mechanical reflection of the objects which lie in his field of vision. Nor is it much more intelligent to restrict the artist to what is called an interpretation of those objects - the running commentary of the impressionistic journalist. What history demands in its long run, is the object itself - the work of art which is itself a created reality, an addition to the sum of real objects in the world. Such objects can only come from the artist's own world, the unique world of his own subjective existence. That, of course, is not a vacuum—it is the most crowded receptacle in the universe, and psychology has never plumbed its depths."

"The whole of Klee's life-work was a white energy against the dark background of modern Germany"

Its of interest that a quotation by Max Raphael on the abstraction of Neolithic geometric style, (sited in Read's 'Icon and Idea' ) could just as easily be applied to Klee's painting above!  Especially 'detachment' over the whole scene, and 'connection of content and meaning with...life and death'.

synthesis, reflecting the will to create a visual unity out of a multiplicity of elements;
simplicity, indicating the will to build complex structures from a few elements; formal necessity, deriving from the will both to represent and to conceal content in an adequate sign; detachment, arising from the will of the artist to raise himself above all content of the inner and outer worlds, the sensual emotions as well as the physical objects; definiteness, bespeaking the will to embody eternal contrasts in self-evident form; energy, expressing the will to master by magic that which transcends man's physical powers, even life itself; and, finally, connection of content and meaning with two worlds, those of life and death.'

Post title 'To Hello with Culture' taken from a book by Sir Herbert Read, WWI battalion leader and survivor - turned anarchist philosopher against all totalitarianism.  Friend of Jung and Orwell.

His profound interest in natural law and art is worth looking at today, in our increasingly totalitarian environments.  As many do today, he advocated for decentralization of power, leading to the people organising themselves.  As an anti-industrialist, (childhood spent in farm life) he has commonality with William Blake who observed the changing society of a nation covered in 'dark satanic mills' resulting from the 'full steam ahead' progress of the machine and profit.

Its easy to imagine how the experience of war, and especially the brutality of WWI, would cause a thinking man like Read to consider how life should be lived that all may have meaning rather than survival within the rat race of industrialism and its associated bureaucrats.

Film about Read.  Interviewed 1956

A gentle spoken man with a great belief in art as a necessity for human wellbeing, but not as a means of lucrative competitiveness .

Read was tired of the old "gigantic boredom" of fine art, therefore an advocate for new, modern art and set up the ICA with Roland Penrose.  He believed a better world might come from a wider interest in developing art ideas.  (He would not be pleased with the self obsessed, decadent and gender analysing 'art' of today.). Art does indeed tend to reflect the culture of any social engineering which has been financed.

"There is only one plan — the plan of nature.  We must live according to natural laws, and by virtue of the power which comes from concentrating upon their manifestation in the individual human mind"   ~ Read

In Icon and Idea, Read further describes how the history of art shows a changing attitude or predeliction for art with vitality, or moved towards abstraction and pattern.  Paleolithic cave paintings he saw having vitality compared with more geometric Neolithic art.  We have no idea he suggests, whether Paleolithic art was a culmination of previous ancient art that could have been geometric, or whether the earliest artists instinctively had vitality to accurately draw their beasts.  An artist could have been a shaman, who by the power of his ability could inspire the hunt, for survival. That would make it part of survival ritual and not 'art' as we think of it, as a showpiece.  Read explains how abstraction may show advancement:

my intention is to show that in relation to the naturalistic art of the Paleolithic period the geometric art of the Neolithic period represents an extension of aesthetic sensibility, and not, as he (Worringer) has suggested, a contraction.

I can vouch that, as a designer and artist, its easy to produce images of the world, but much harder to conceive from within a coherent abstracted art, with a multiplicity of thought connections. [Link to seed torus painting ADD]

In Coats of Many Colours, Read writes of Eric Gill's thoughts against industrial capitalist society.  Gill, like Blake, resolved to earn a living by humble means, as a letter-setter rather than architect.

My socialism was from the beginning a revolt against the intellectual degradation of the factory hands and the damned ugliness of all that capitalist- industrialism produced, and it was not primarily a revolt against the cruelty and injustice of the possessing classes or against the misery of the poor. It was not so much the working class that concerned me as the working man— not so much what he got from working as what he did by working.  ~. Gill

Gill considered the place of artists in the machine age:  "What the machine cannot do is the " thinking " part, and what distinguishes the artist from the workman is the ability to " think ", a certain faculty which the Germans call Gestaltungsfaehigkei.   ~ Gill 

William Blake would agree with that.  This is the crux of Read's philosophy; that life should be about the vital quality of what you do, and in some way part of a natural law; all things good and true;  the thinking which bring activities into form, and from thence developed his interest in philosophy of art.  Art is from within, thoughts reflective of culture, which humans bring into being by form.  Art activities bring the inside out and are as such a reflection of culture from an era in anthropological perspective.

'.....life must be so ordered that the individual can live a natural life, attending to what is within " Read

 

11 Mar

Design Services

Amelia Hoskins / Art, Designs / / 0 Comments

Painting and Design Examples

Murals - Furniture - Silk

Images link to Heritage Murals and Shamanic Nights

My own photographs are all available for mural and illustration design work.  Everyone has their own idea of what would be their own 'resonant vision' for a mural or painting, which depends on the setting and house style.

  • Landscapes and seascapes featured on this site, from walking trips, can be utilised as backgrounds, in detailed or simplified form.
  • A shaded outdoor space can be brightened up with light and colour. An interior space might have historical images.
  • Flowers can be used as large paintings or combined with several as decorative designs.
  • I will work with your ideas to research and design the solution for your space; and can also work from your own photographs.
  • Colours are chosen to blend in or compliment existing setting.
  • Painted on 4ft x 4ft boards in my studio, or directly in situ on your wall if preferred.

Mural image example: China Orchids painted much larger than life (with other orchids and trees, with additional Peony Room)

Explore my Heritage Murals website for custom ideas for murals and painted furniture. Photo gallery: landscapes and seascapes  gives some ideas of landscape possibilities: seashore, forest and trees potential for murals.

09 Mar

Blake – Newton – Urizen

Amelia Hoskins / Art, Resonant Art / / 0 Comments

Science and Imagination

'The great French philosopher Voltaire would remark, we are all now disciples of Newton”.

They were all “asleep”, Blake gravely noted, "intent on reducing the divine relationships and character to straight lines, parabolas, and ratios".

Blake's image of Newton under the sea being the measuring architect, illustrates all that may be hidden from him, by using measuring alone.

Blake accepted the new science and cosmology discovered by Newton.  He even took lessons in mathematics; but thought the age of reason was being too rational, ignoring spiritual aspects of any collective consciousness carried through the ages, and was justifiably concerned it would lead to humanity's downfall.   He was probably one of the earliest psychological enquirers.  He knew life is far more than any restrictive organisation into lines and numbers,  to which purpose he created a character 'Urizen' to represent what he sees as the limitations of Newton.

Now a fourfold vision I see,
And a fourfold vision is given to me;
‘Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
And threefold in soft Beulah’s night
And twofold Always. May God us keep
From Single vision & Newton’s sleep!

William Blake, Extract from letter to Thomas Butts, 2nd October 1800

Physicist Werner Heisenberg quotes appear to correspond with Blake's idea of "Newton's sleep".

"The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct “actuality” of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation is impossible, however."

"We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning"

Measuring in a traditional way won't get the answers at the atomic level.  Blake would have understood Heisenberg's insight to a 'method of questioning' [when only using reductionist materialist science].

Book:  'ETERNITY'S SUNRISE' by Leo Damrosch.   Chapter:  ATOMS AND VISIONARY INSIGHT

“Deduct from a rose its redness,” he wrote, “from a lily its whiteness, from a diamond its hardness, from a sponge its softness, from an oak its height, from a daisy its lowness, and rectify everything in nature as the philosophers do, and then we shall return to chaos.”        William BLAKE

This is very insightful about the identity and meaning of things.

Damrosch's quote from a modern science historian expresses how in the age of discovery it was feared harmony and creativity would suffer.  We now see in 2022 how this is happening with the march of technocracy.

Damrosch:  'Blake understood these implications and utterly despised them.'

The world that people had thought themselves living in [before empiricism] a world rich with colour and sound, redolent with fragrance, filled with gladness, love and beauty, speaking everywhere of purposive harmony and creative ideals - was now crowded into minute corners of the brains of scattered organic beings. The really important world outside was a world hard, cold, colourless, silent, and dead; a world of quantity, a world of mathematically computable motions in mechanical regularity.” '

Damrosch:  ''Newton wrote:

"God formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles,” which resemble each other just as much “as the sands on the shore.” Whenever we open our eyes, the stream of particles strikes our retinas and triggers signals in the brain."

In response to Newton's description of the matter, Blake had his own fascinating reasoning on energy and metaphysics.

Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.   

Blake was more a psychologist and spiritualist with a focus on consciousness.

[Add Links for this to his 4-fold story with Beulah etc.]

And every sand becomes a gem
Reflected in the beams divine
Blown back they blind the mocking eye
But still in Israel’s paths they shine
The atoms of Democritus
And Newton’s particles of light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore
Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright

Damrosch sees the poem as depicting a spiritual light force, rather than a 'hailstorm of particles'. 'He envokes a great symbolic story, the Exodus from bondage to freedom. The light that illuminates that journey is a spiritual force, not a hailstorm of  material particles'

Whilst Blake's Biblical analogy fits with his own preoccupation with Biblical illustrations, he may have had even more insightful vision beyond that simple poetic meaning; one of a future where reductionist science would dominate in a way which would divorce humanity from a spiritual or divine existence.

Now in 2022 [now 2023], we see that technology and pharmaceutical science have become reductionist, with no bars on  advances in genetic engineering, and when AI will control things, with NO humane feeling whatsoever.  An incidental fact is that many of the new science-tech and pharma-biotech companies are Jewish run or owned, which brings a heavy salience to a different reading we could impose on Blake's 'atoms of Democritus' and 'Newton's particles of light' being 'sands upon the red sea shore'.  In fact Netanahu contracted with Pfizer to use his entire population for data study, the majority of them being vaccinated against C.19.  Some times Blake's writing is almost like Nostradamus; and who can say whether there have not been people who could see the future.

Blake explained how spiritual light is not just a matter of material particles; that it was not correct to describe everything in reductionist form.  He welcomed the move away from religious orthodoxy, but did not want that to mean the loss of all meanings.  We cannot nowadays know exactly how the new 'scientific' mindset of 1700s was affecting people's outlook on their future; whether many were aware the direction science was taking.  We can though determine that Blake was a modern thinking man: he didn't need rigid church dogmas when he had his own spiritualist insights, akin to quantum physics, and much of his writing explored the psyche.

To see the world in a grain of sand,
and heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour.

He may have been inspired by 17th century German mystic, Jacob Boehme, who wrote:

"When I take up a stone or clod of earth and look upon it, then I see that which is above and that which is below;  yea, I see the whole world therein.”

Eternity, likewise, is present in each moment of lived experience; it is the river of time in which we are continuously immersed. He coined a memorable term for it. “The Eternal Now”. [check quotes]

Eternity is in love with the productions of time

Blake - ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’.

Note:  Some writers of their day - thoughts on Newtonian Physics:

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night;
God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.   

Alexander Pope

Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever

Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone. 

William Wordsworth

Urizen misunderstood

To promote the Blake retrospective exhibition at the Tate in 2019, his last artwork was projected on the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral:  an image of 'creator God' but also man as 'Urizen' the measurer and controller of all things.  The latter seems fitting these days when all things; political health and media are under more and more control.  Visionary and prophetic Blake would be up in arms about how things are going today, and be saying 'I warned you..!'

Blake's outlook on the rationally measured world was a recurrent theme pursued in his character URIZEN until his death.  Even though science has advanced civilization by technology, in 2020's we see just how far 'rational' science has come, all the way to nuclear weapons, bioweapons and biotech modifications; towards the planned alteration of humans.  We can imagine Blake today would be ranting about biotechnology and technocracy.

Many inspiring articles on Blake in TheHumanDivine blog

02 Mar

Visionary Light Painters

Amelia Hoskins / Art, Cosmos, Resonance / / 0 Comments

Blake and Francisco de Holanda

One of the greatest achievements of artists is to show the knowledge, understanding and consciousness of their own era.  Holanda's geometric vision of cosmic creation, which must have been ‘out of this world’ in 1545, shows the great interest in science, whilst still including 'God the creator'.

The First Day of Creation, by Francisco de Holanda (1545)

Holanda uses spectacular overlapping triangles of light leading into a vortex, creating the world with atmosphere.   Now we know the universe is electric, it makes perfect sense.  Holando's work was only discovered in mid-20th century in an obscure notebook in National Library of Spain. Its clear he was profoundly influenced by visionary contemporary philosopher Jacob Boehme; whom Blake also revered.

Light as Life Force

Holanda combines the human figure as ethereal God with power of light in 'Light of Creation' with Alpha and Omega at his fingertips; a purist Biblical vision, but combining the advancing knowledge of physics.  We can interpret this image today as a fine depiction of the electric universe, which science is still catching up with. The figure of 'God' is neither here nor there in being either correct or incorrect: it serves as a symbol of divine creation.

Both Blake and Holanda were visionary painters of both human and cosmic energy, aware of developments in cosmology and mathematics in attempting to understand the creation of the universe.

Blake (with his knowledge of modern politics and Freemasons even in 1800s ) takes the idea of the Sun as God (Pagan origins worldwide) in 'Satan In His Original Glory'  1805; Subtitled 'Thou Wast Perfect in Thy Ways from the Day That Thou Was Created, Till Iniquity Was Found in Thee”  as the outcome of total rationalisation The sun is beautifully depicted by a body in golden light, but around it are humanity being tossed about in the Sun's power.  Despite the worship of the Sun throughout mankind's history, as life giver, Blake saw the weakness in single minded cults, and was right to be concerned, now we know science has run amok which is far removed from the natural environment Blake so revered in his poetry.

Blake is aware of the 'Luciferian' god of light of the Illuminati Order, known to Blake through his knowledge of Freemasonry, with lineage from Zoroastrian and Babylonian 'sun god'.  For Blake, focusing on 'light' as a divinity is a mistaken frame of mind, which has been used to control mankind for all time.  The Sun-Satan holds the royal orb and sceptre of control, with all of human activity floating in its wake, after the French Revolution. Blake reverses the hands holding the orb and sceptre, indicating the fall of Christianity and Kings: easily relatable to British vs America war.

Today we could interpret Blake's painting as the disguise of bio-techno-Satanists introducing genetic modification for their idea of a great new future of Luciferian transhumanism, with the people as flotsam and jetsom surviving under the controls of technocracy which holds all the controls over science.  Blake's work was moving towards consciousness of human spirit.

Both Blake and Holanda depict a dark red background orb, the heat of energy or the sun, as seen similarly in Blake's Ancient of Days,  which also depicts geometric ordering, or measuring.  The architect's tool is again forming the triangle.

Photo author's own from Blake exhibition Tate Gallery, London 2020, shows accurate colours.

Referenced from Blog TheHumanDivine To be continued....

04 Jan

Satan and Totalitarianism

Paradise Lost - Satan - The Whore of Babylon

Another interpretation of 'Resonance' is when artists describe the probing issues of their time.  Such resonance is echoed even louder when we experience it in our own time.  The 18th Century concept of atheistic science being Satanic has resonance in 2022 with the emergent biotech developments towards an AI driven transhumanist agenda.  Artificial intelligence companies funded by big tech already suggest their AI system will be a 'god'. [link]  William Blake, who drew and printed Biblical scenes, had some foresight on this subject.  Beyond his engraving commissions, he painted Satanic images inspired from the Bible.

William Blake:  Heaven vs Hell

The doorway to the future awaits the couple showing a future of ascendency through hot and cold flames representative of 'heaven and hell' in life's reality.   Beyond the ocean of time, figures ascend the distant hills of development.  The painting is about Blake's universe of balance, expressed in 'contraries' which exist in counterpoint to one and another, that there is no progression without them.  In fact we can only identify one aspect because the other aspect exists.

"contraries and oppositions - love and hate, expansion and contraction, opaqueness and translucence, reason and energy, attraction and repulsion, these are the poles of his world, where Without Contraries is no progression."    ~ William Blake

 

Blake's ‘coincident oppositore’  is the unity of opposites; one force existing in a balance with another.  Blake unifies body of God with body of satan:

Blake hides his political commentary within the biblical stories, as parables, almost as a political cartoonist.    Censorship is nothing new and he was almost imprisoned for his beliefs and associations, forced to remove text from God of Light. He was a radical 'dissenter' who also moved in Freemason circles: as a politically thinking man would need to know the plans of the day.  We cannot know exactly the oppressiveness of his time.  He would have agreed with Swedenborg's ideas of dismantling the overarching power of church as State, but not the dismantling of Christianity in total.

In 2022 the world is becoming more totalitarian despite lessons from history on absolute power; a long way from the utopian world we could envisage in the 1960s.  Technocracy is in the ascendant and beginning to organise itself to remove freedoms to keep its power.

The larger you build a system the more there is proclivity to worship it as if it is everything; build as large as possible.  "tendency of the rational mind to produce totalitarianism and to fall in love with it, like the tower of Babel and nothing outside them is allowed to exist." ~ Jordan Peterson

People know the balance has gone too far in favour of ruling technocratic oligarchies who have more power than governments.  We can look at the thinking of 18th Century writers and artists who were concerned how the rise of atheism after the rationality of the philosophy of The Enlightenment would affect society.

Blake's outlook on the rationally measured world was a recurrent theme pursued in his character URIZEN until his death.  Even though science has advanced civilization by technology, in 2020's we see just how far 'rational' science has come, all the way to nuclear weapons, bioweapons and biotech modifications; towards genetic modification of humans. Medicine has been hijacked by big oil.  We can imagine Blake today would be ranting about the loss of biotechnology and technocracy.

Urizen misunderstood?

To promote the Blake retrospective exhibition at the Tate in 2019, his last artwork 'The Ancient of Days' was projected on the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.  Organisers likely believed it an 'image of God'. I believe its a double-take by Blake of man trying to act as 'God' by measuring everything and even the heavens.  Visionary and prophetic Blake would be up in arms about how things are going today, when all things, political, health and media are under more and more control and be saying 'I warned you..!'

For Blake, his imaginative figure of Urizen is mankind ruled by science. Poetry and figures of Urizen represent rationalised science of those believing to have god like capabilities to control humankind, which Blake, like Milton, envisioned with pending doom for humanity.

'Urizenic Rationality itself is the program that has been expelled from Eternity, through challenging the role of the “transcendent function”, as Peterson suggests, and decides instead to create a world in its own fallen image: the world of Representation and Division, over which it can have power.' 

~ TheHumanDivine

Blake and Milton warned of a technocratic age of scientific 'reason' devoid of spirituality.  [Add Milton quotes] One idea of heaven and hell, good and bad times; is that they will always come, in different forms.  Tyranny of the people we know from history.  Poets, artists and philosophers consider the quality of life and the state of the world.  Psychologist, Jordan Peterson wrote Maps of Meaning which includes ideas from Blake.  He is a popular lecturer as people are refreshed by the idea of having a focus on meaning in their lives in a highly technocracised world.

Jordan B Peterson, clinical psychologist, gives talks on religion and totalitarianism.  The figure of Satan to Blake and Milton is one of humanity believing itself divine with ownership of science.  Peterson interprets Milton's Paradise Lost - When people are denied their mythological history it leads them  "to gravitate towards nihilism, or as a counter position, to totalitarianism". (in the C20th)  In the background the existentialists were looking for ways to avoid ideological totalitarianism.  Peterson says 'We know the next step is mass murder'!  Let us note the killing fields of Covid and treatments.

"The immediate consequence, from Milton’s perspective, was that as soon as Satan decided that what he knew was sufficient, and that he could do without the transcendent—which you might think about as the domain outside of what you know—immediately, he was in hell. I was studying totalitarianism when I read Paradise Lost. I thought the true poet, like a prophet, is someone who has intimations of the future. Maybe that’s because the poetic mind—the philosophic or poetic mind—is a pattern detector."

     ~ Jordan B Peterson - Taken from essay in thehumandivine.org

Peterson lecture What We Should Learn from Milton’s Paradise Lost 

Milton is incorporated into the corpus of christianity. He tried to justify 'being' to human beings. Satan is an intellectual figure, the 'evil scientist motif'. The human intellect falls in love with its own productions.  Milton’s hypothesis was that the element of the psyche – the spiritual element of the psyche that characterised the rational mind – would, by its proclivity to produce these totalising systems, end up casting itself into Hell.

"Milton did the first psychoanalytic study of malevolence and evil. God’s highest Angel, who was Satan, Lucifer, the Bringer of Light, the Spirit of Rationality, tormented a rebellion against God in Heaven and was cast into Hell as a consequence. …Satan, as the highest Angel in God’s heavenly Kingdom, is a personification of the tendency of the Rational Mind to produce totalitarian systems and then to fall in love with them ."

~ Jordan B Peterson

The Number Of The Beast Is 666

The Beast in the book of Revelations and Daniel

Blake is familiar with the biblical texts' descriptions of the beast having many heads, horns and crowns.  The Mark of the Beast is obviously taken from St. John’s 'Apocalypse'  prophesied theme that the antichrist will present as a fake god, (a techtopian globalist plan which is against natural law).

This image would not be out of place in 2022.  The lamb in the painting is the 'lamb of God' with human hands signifying the people below which appear as a flock of sheep.  The white Satan may represent consciousness which points in an opposite direction to the focus of the dragon winged 'bad satan': this would fit with ‘coincident oppositore’  which Blake understood as a balanced world of contraries.

Today's understanding of a beast which would rule over everyone, ties in with the techno and biotech science developments equatable with human chip ‘mark of the beast’; the body-mind control through biotech: with ambitions towards transhumanism.  Authoritarian monitoring and control is essential to the techno-transhumanist dream of the 'internet of bodies' and who also want a church of AI.

…"authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation,” and “all the world marvelled and followed the beast" : describes internet tech giant Google followed by millions world wide, and in broader terms the 'Satanic' surveillance techno society.

And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a name of blasphemy…. And all the world marveled and followed the beast…. It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If anyone has an ear, let him hear.’

From:   St. John ~ The Apocalypse referenced from book 'Antichrist: The Fulfilment of Globalisation: The Ancient Church and the End of History'

The Whore of Babylon

Again the horned serpent heads of 'Babylon'.  Blake has taken this idea from 16th Century illustrations.

The male is likely King Nimrod, grandson of Noah, who was thought to be King and God of the world at that time, of the peoples who survived the flood.  Queen Semeramis holds the urn where people are born of innocence, then directed down below to war and trouble.

The beast represents power; the leaders throughout history causing wars.  Both the near history of the American Civil War and the French Revolution of Blake's own time, would mean such imagery would be very important to him.  Blake noted in 1798, in contemporary culture and society “The beast & the whore rule without controls”

Here again the seven, horned and crowned heads are the beast.  The man is likely Nimrod, husband (and son, say some accounts) of Queen Semiramis.  We can equate the low morals of Babylon with today's socially engineered gender dystopic liberalism and cult of offensive wars.  Craig Koester says outright that "the whore is Rome, yet more than Rome, it is the Roman imperial world, which in turn represents the world alienated from God".  [This refers to the Papacy as blasphemy, discussed in video below]. Queen Semiramis wears the papal tiara, which indicates Blake's thoughts on the Catholic church, a political cartoon in the modern vernacular.

Interestingly, the 7 crowned serpent heads very likely refer to the 7 sovereign tribes left in Europe after the splitting of the Roman Empire into East and West.   Alemanni - Germans :  Burgundians - Swiss :  Franks - French  :  Lombards - Italians :  Saxons - English :  Suevi - Portuguese :  Visigoths - Spanish.  (Ten tribes, three extinct:  Heruli, Ostrogoths and Vandals).

Development of Kings and Kingdoms is covered in From Babylon to America. Prophetic texts from Daniel's dream are analysed to explain the man of Gold, Silver, Bronze, Iron and Clay, showing how they depict the empires.

 

The head of one beast entity was dreamed with one horn after others were rooted out, being the Papacy, which claimed to be God on Earth, with the power to forgive sins.  This is blasphemy, as the bible passages describe the attributes of a fake God.  After scholars deciphered Daniel's Prophecy, Napoleon had the Pope dis-invested for blasphemy in 1789, which date corresponded to the video analysis on biblical time spans.  William Blake lived through this and his images display the shackling of the Pope, on his way to hell with the previous kingdoms.

Lucifer And The Pope in Hell - 1805

Religion no longer has a central place in society as it did in Blake's time when he read the Bible avidly as a child, and was a commissioned engraver of Biblical illustrations; a popular subject for the new printing of the age.  Blake was consistently against powerful organised state religion, so would have backed Napoleon's acts against the Papacy in his art.

The Pope is chained to Lucifer; unable to escape evil, while deposed Kings lie in the depths of hell. Interesting to note Lucifer has scales as part serpent.  Evil is often seen in Blake's art as a serpent engulfing men who have succumbed to evil; the central figure is ambiguous, part evil.  Note the Kings' similarity to the seven beast-headed Kings in Whore of Babylon.

Snake Biting Vanni Fucci (Dante)

Serpents are poised ready to attack Vanni Fucci, as he seems to defy God.  The flames of hell are not far away.  Innocent angelic ladies are often depicted observing events, which may signify Blake's respect for women, who we know he was always ready to champion if a woman was in harm's way.

 

“We are looking at the primordial serpent right in the eye right now and we have the opportunity to cut its head off”

 ~ Dr Zelenko.  Interview on Infowars  A statement with resonance today, on the times where the serpent is big pharma biotechtopia.

The new god of Pharma-techtopia

Pharma techtopians and transhumanist planners like Klaus Schwab of the WEF and Yuval Harari feel they can be a new God, as they seem to be duplicating the Satanic route for mankind, as a modern day 'Nimrod' working against the natural way of life towards an AI Dreamers' transhumanism.  Klaus Schwab's The 4th Industrial Revolution plans neural implants.  This mad science is against the natural law of God. [Add link to SA]. 

Ian McGilchrist in his book 'The Matter of Things' extrapulates the reason behind thinking in terms of all life having contraries in dipolar force to make a whole.  He discusses the need for meaning and putting reason back into the world Iain McGilchrist: The Coincidence of Opposites

[to continue... writers on conjugates and link MU holons]

[create new post on paintings which represent conjugates]

How 'the Divine' can protect against Totalitarianism

Jordan Peterson and Peter Robinson of Hoover Inst. at Stanford (March 2022) again makes a case for a society based on the divine (including natural free speech) as a protector against totalitarianism.  He suggests starting values would be truth, justice and beauty "some good allies"!

With the underpining idea that our society is based on Judeo-Christianity, he defines 'divine' without it having to relate to a godhead religion. ...... [Notes and quotes to complete]  Acting without self consciousness. (living naturally without forced rulings) is living in God, being God.  When the divinity of mankind is considered this way: any ruling forces of power, socialist constructs, the worst being totalitarianism; all reduce or take away the individual enterprise and free thought which are replaced by social engineered mind sets.

Jordan explains how the youth have little to live for after a Marxist education, which instils guilt into their innocent existence.  “Its very hard to write a description of the world, without being informed by some value structure”. Postmodernists went wrong when they turned to Marxism to answer that question, organising our questions under the Nietcshzean term ‘will to power’.  "An appalling doctrine...There’s no evidence that power structures our relationships".

This divinity is further explained in Mc Gilchrist's interview [link]; how society has in the main lost contact with a 'divine' or 'sublime' concept of truth beauty and justice.

Blake's outlook on the rationally measured world was a recurrent theme pursued in his character URIZEN until his death.  Even though science has advanced civilization by technology, in 2020's we see just how far 'rational' science has come, all the way to nuclear weapons, bioweapons and biotech modifications; towards the planned alteration of humans. Medicine was hijacked by big oil.  We can imagine Blake today would be ranting about biotechnology and technocracy.

27 Apr

Resonant Ideas

Illustrations and designs are 'resonant' when they reflect a sublime order or understanding of nature and the cosmos which resonates with the observer.  Aspects of colour and tone can have similar effects as music or poetry, connecting human thoughts and emotions, which artists have explored to understand the human condition and history.

Art which connect ideas

Image of cross with circle pattern connects spirituality of religion. The light behind, appearing as a glimpse, represents spiritual illumination in this setting. Photographic observation connects resonance of meaning.

Tulip Sunset Silhouette

Flower silhouette resonates with Celtic cross image by way of its shape (circular with stem) and its background of sunset.  The Celtic circle is likely representing life from sun, as does the flower form which 'resonates'. People feel a poetic resonance in sunsets.

My plant photography is drawn towards shapes reflecting aspects of the cosmos, such as stars or spirals, a resonance with universal nature.

Artists and Resonance

"Peace and Plenty and domestic happiness is the source of sublime art'"   ~ William Blake

 

William Blake was concerned with resonance; showing meaning through his poetry, illustrations and paintings. Two aspects of Blake's concern - 'heaven and hell' - family happy lightness vs mankind's struggle.

'Teach These Souls to Fly' - A mother guides her baby to fly in lightness and happy colours.

'Second book of Urizen' - Blake's mythical figure Urizen from a series of related works, is always depicted as being part of the struggle of humanity, controlling, forcing things, working against harmony. In this painting he has a red orb which may signify the world on fire with wars, as Blake lived through the French Revolution and free America. More on Blake 

The Value of Vision - Art for the people or as artist self indulgence

Popular, commercially viable art has to be valued by the majority of people. Most people want to see 'pleasant' 'nice', 'pretty' representations of the world, which is why nature photography is perennially popular; because nature always shows balance of design.  People also recognise emotional stories they can empathise with, so artists who can show this are respected.

Nature images please us by reminder of the natural world or of abstract ideas which portray a vision: then we might say by comparison that art which does not have an inspiration from 'beautiful vision' lacks a philosophy which might be important to communicate - and ultimately to enhance society in any era.

Art is made when the artist wishes to resonate with a perception he has.  We can ask if there can be a point at which such expression has little or no quality to resonate with viewers:  whether it is a 'good' or 'uplifting' visual experience, or mere subjective self indulgence. Art Nouveau, Pre Raphaelites, Romanticism and Impressionism depict uplifting images and scenes.   Surrealism and some Abstract Expressionist painting expressed 'angst'. [Ernst war, Kooning women]

All art is a synthetic representation of life experience, as seen or felt by the artist.  However, if we hold that art with a powerful resonance to move people inspirationally is beneficial to society, then we can suggest that 'Synthetic' art may be considered as having been made with no real 'vision' to resonate inspiringly with others.

With some art the meaning becomes confused, obfuscated or meaningless; nowadays seen in 'synthetic' art. [link]  Postmodernism has had a strange influence on art which has come to light in exhibitions and public sculpture, where it has become more concerned with political agendas and nihilism.  In an era where we do not experience war first hand, people seem to invent their own persecutions as victims.

Photographs can be purchased in full size resolution and up to 55 inches wide. Please enquire amelia-jane-hoskins@protonmail.com (To be marketed in future when paper/material decided). Mural commissions taken for any image, or adaptation thereof.