Solve Et Coagula via Assiah-Yetzirah-Briah-Atziluth via IKEA
120x100 cm, collage of IKEA manuals, 2013
There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.
The whole crazy business seemed to pull out of my guts the very worst in me—my worst fears—the worst aspects of my character—my worst insecurities and feelings of shame and guilt. I didn't know it at the time, but that was exactly what was supposed to be happening. That's what Solomonic magick is all about. The worst in me was my problem. The worst in me was the demon. When it finally dawned on me that I had successfully evoked the demon, and I had the worst of me trapped in that magick Triangle, I had no alternative but to harness and redirect its monstrous power and give it new marching orders. From then on, that particular demon would be working for me rather than against me.
Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness.
It is only by working the rituals, that any significant degree of understanding can develop. If you wait until you are positive you understand all aspects of the ceremony before beginning to work, you will never begin to work.
― Aldous Huxley
The whole crazy business seemed to pull out of my guts the very worst in me—my worst fears—the worst aspects of my character—my worst insecurities and feelings of shame and guilt. I didn't know it at the time, but that was exactly what was supposed to be happening. That's what Solomonic magick is all about. The worst in me was my problem. The worst in me was the demon. When it finally dawned on me that I had successfully evoked the demon, and I had the worst of me trapped in that magick Triangle, I had no alternative but to harness and redirect its monstrous power and give it new marching orders. From then on, that particular demon would be working for me rather than against me.
― Lon Milo DuQuette
Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness.
― Philip K. Dick
It is only by working the rituals, that any significant degree of understanding can develop. If you wait until you are positive you understand all aspects of the ceremony before beginning to work, you will never begin to work.
― Lon Milo DuQuette
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Dumachus Gestas
70x100, Worn Cardboard, 2014
After its hothouse incubation in the seventies, appropriation breathed important new life into art. This life flowered spectacularly over the decades - even if it's now close to aesthetic kudzu.
One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!"
..Acts of appropriation are part of the process by which we make ourselves. Appropriating - taking something for one’s own use - need not be synonymous with exploitation. This is especially true of cultural appropriation. The “use” one makes of what is appropriated is the crucial factor.
― Jerry Saltz
One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!"
― Luke 23:39
..Acts of appropriation are part of the process by which we make ourselves. Appropriating - taking something for one’s own use - need not be synonymous with exploitation. This is especially true of cultural appropriation. The “use” one makes of what is appropriated is the crucial factor.
― Bell Hooks, Art on My Mind: Visual Politics
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Definition
60x70, Metal mesh, black paint, sandpaper, 2013
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
Since I was 16, I've felt a black cloud hangs over me. Since then, I have taken pills for depression.
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Since I was 16, I've felt a black cloud hangs over me. Since then, I have taken pills for depression.
― Amy Winehouse
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Bengezelayo
Oil on canvas, 60x70, 2012
We are not this story's author, who fills time and eternity with his purpose. Yet his purpose is achieved in our duty; and our duty is fulfilled in service to one another. Never tiring, never yielding, never finishing, we renew that purpose today: to make our country more just and generous; to affirm the dignity of our lives and every life. This work continues. This story goes on. And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.
― George W. Bush, Inaugural speech (2001)
An angel can illuminate the thought and mind of man by strengthening the power of vision, and by bringing within his reach some truth which the angel himself contemplates.
― St Thomas Aquinas
Sondela 1-3
Oil on canvas, 60x70, 2013
What is all this shit about angels? Have you heard this? Three out of four people now, believe in angels. What're you, fucking stupid? Has everybody lost their fucking minds in this country? Angels, shit. You know what I think it is? I think it's a massive collective psychotic chemical flashback of all the drugs — all the drugs — smoked, swallowed, snorted, shot, and absorbed rectally by all Americans from 1960 to 1990. Thirty years of adulterated street drugs'll get you some fucking angels, my friend.
― George Carlin, "Angels" on You Are All Diseased (1999)
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
― G. K. Chesterton, "Orthodoxy" (1908)
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Ett Hint
Mural, 2014
"Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself.""Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and your neighbor's loss as your own loss.""Do to the doer to cause that he do thus to you.""That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another.""Do not do to your neighbor what you would take ill from him.""Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing.""What you do not want to happen to you, do not do it yourself either.""Do not do to others that which angers you when they do it to you.""What thou avoidest suffering thyself seek not to impose on others.""Neither to harm nor be harmed.""To injure anyone is never just anywhere.""Expect from others what you did to them.""Treat others as you treat yourself.""Let not a man consent to do those things to another which, he knows, will cause sorrow.""We must treat others as we wish others to treat us""Blessed is he who preferreth his brother before himself.""Choose thou for thy neighbour that which thou choosest for thyself.""Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.""Do to no one what you yourself dislike.""Recognize that your neighbor feels as you do, and keep in mind your own dislikes.""That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.""Do to others what you want them to do to you.""Love your neighbor as you love yourself.""What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.""One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one’s own self.""That which is unfavorable to us, do not do that to others.""Do not treat people in a way you would not wish to be treated yourself""As you would have people do to you, do to them; and what you dislike to be done to you, don't do to them.""Nothing can be better for us unless it is better for all."
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κρύσταλλος
Spraypaint and tape stencils, various surfaces and dimensions, 2007-2013
I can't speak for the future. I have no crystal ball.
― Michael Jordan
Next he lifted a square, transparent crystal block, small enough to cup in his palm — much too small to contain the maze of apparatus within it. In a moent Scott had solved that problem. The crystal was a sort of magnifying glass, vastly enlarging the things inside the block.
― Lewis Padgett, Mimsy Were The Borogoves (1943)
The crystal cube he slipped into his pocket, which already bulged with string, a coil of wire, two pennies, a wad of tinfoil, a grimy defenses stamp, and a chunk of feldspar.
― Lewis Padgett, Mimsy Were The Borogoves (1943)
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Jormungand
70x60, Oil on canvas (2012)
Consider a small child sitting on his mother's lap while she reads him a picture book. The picture book opens to a width that effectively places the child at the center of a closed circle - that of mother's body, arms, and the picture book... That circle, so private and intimate, is a place apart form the demands and stresses of daily life, a sanctuary in and from which the child can explore the many worlds offered in picture books. Despite all of our society's technological advances, it still just takes one child, one book, and one reader, to create this unique space, to work this everyday magic.
He awaits himself while walking, out of the icy circle to escape.
― Martha V. Parravano
He awaits himself while walking, out of the icy circle to escape.
― Dejan Stojanovic
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