#102 – As Above … (Static)
#102 – As Above … (Panimating)
It only takes the morning sight of a dove …
The miracle of three stars in a row …
Sitting and watching how do flowers grow …
Dropping all linen, at night, to make love …
To be enlightened, disarmed, and to know.
Just makes sense … fits your brain like a glove.
Nothing to do with riches, or the lack thereof.
It’s about the moment, the emotion, and the flow!
Coz here is the wisdom, sort of,
And all around you, let it grow:
As above …
… So below!
Quad Damage
Techniques: Processing, P5JS, Coge VJ, Pixelmator
Fresh air comes through the window tonight, its olfactive texture subtly enhanced by traces of wood fire, and as the glass of port hits my lips, I am transported to a place far and high, in the mountains, where the nights are clear and can possibly be lit by only 2 things: A starry sky, sometimes hosting a bright moon … and a camp fire. The memories are rushing back, of nights spent by the camp fire, alone or with friends. And with them, the same questions Mankind has always been asking: What are these bright dots above? Are we alone? Who are we and where are we?
Some answers have been provided in our modern times, yet we are left filling the blanks with century old superstitions, brain teasing conjectures, and mind soothing spiritual beliefs. Millenia ago, the Egyptian themselves, and certainly before them our antediluvian ancestors from Atlantis, were already busy probing the mysteries of the cosmos, erecting sphinxes and pyramids according to some rigorous principles we are now struggling to decipher, but definitely along the lines of of the stars.
As discussed at length by Robert Beauval and Graham Hancock in their numerous publications, there are more than strong presumptions now to believe that the entire Gizah complex, for example, 1/ was erected well before what academic scholars think, and 2/ that it perfectly aligns with the constellation of Orion as it appeared in the skies of Africa way back when, in what we now call the Age of Leo, around 10,500BC. The Sphinx alone, was then exactly watching it’s celestial counterpart rising with the sun due East at summer solstice.
Robert Bauval’s 101 about the Sphinx: http://myblog.robertbauval.co.uk/2014/12/22/the-age-of-leo/
“As above, so below“: So it seems. Interestingly enough this wisdom is attributed to the Ibis headed Egyptian god Thoth, associated with the arbitration of godly disputes, the arts of magic, the system of writing, the development of science, and the judgment of the dead. This line made its way through the ages and around the Mediterranean sea as part of a text called the “Emerald Tablet“, whose author is believed to be Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice Great), a combined representation of Greek god Hermes and Egyptian god Thoth.
The text of the tablet has been found in Arabic texts written some time between the 6th and 8th century, and here is what its 14 verses say, as per the translation of Sir Isaac Newton himself:
- Tis true without lying, certain & most true.
- That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing
- And as all things have been & arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
- The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nourse.
- The father of all perfection in the whole world is here.
- Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.
- Separate thou the earth from the fire, the subtile from the gross sweetly with great industry.
- It ascends from the earth to the heaven & again it descends to the earth & receives the force of things superior & inferior.
- By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world
- & thereby all obscurity shall fly from you.
- Its force is above all force. For it vanquishes every subtle thing & penetrates every solid thing.
- So was the world created.
- From this are & do come admirable adaptations whereof the means (or process) is here in this. Hence I am called Hermes Trismegist, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world
- That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished & ended.
What interests me here is verse 2, obviously, and I wonder, beyond the mysteries of ancient Egypt and the forbidden secrets of Alchemy, how much this can be true, at the light of modern science. The incredible convergences observed in the attempts to unify the Einsteinian General Theory of Gravity at large scales, with the Standard Model of Particles and Quantum Theory, baffles more than one scientist these days.
Great article about the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) here: https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/a-gut-feeling-about-physics
For the campfire, I tweaked a flame in Processing, it gave me just the right feel of a digital fire, fully determined by my simplified set of laws emulating gravity and quantum mechanics.
Constellations are emulated by connecting particles, a commodity these days, I have trimmed down the code as much as I could to do the job.
Finally, the rotating stars, also in Processing
The 3 animations are then composed in Coge VJ, leveraging masking and layer blending, plus a couple of of interactive shaders.
Soundtrack for this work was brought to me by Mark Slee, for the 10th anniversary of Robot Heart at Burning Man 2017. The track is called “We need Cracks”, by Silky and Arid.