The Departure of the Witches by Penny (d'apres The Departure of the Witches, 1878, by Luis Ricardo Falero.)
Stencil art (or pochoirs)
Tuesday 21 February 2012
Monday 20 February 2012
Existentialism
“The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?
Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing. We need take no more note of it than of a war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century, a war that altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a hundred thousand blacks perished in excruciating torment.
Will the war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century itself be altered if it recurs again and again, in eternal return?
It will: it will become a solid mass, permanently protuberant, its inanity irreparable.
If the French Revolution were to recur eternally, French historians would be less proud of Robespierre. But because they deal with something that will not return, the bloody years of the Revolution have turned into mere words, theories, and discussions, have become lighter than feathers, frightening no one. There is an infinite difference between a Robespierre who occurs only once in history and a Robespierre who eternally returns, chopping off French heads.
Let us therefore agree that the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature. This mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.
Not long ago, I caught myself experiencing the most incredible sensation. Leafing through a book on Hitler, I was touched by some of his portraits: they reminded me of my childhood. I grew up during the war; several members of my family perished in Hitler’s concentration camps; but what were their deaths compared with the memories of a lost period in my life, a period that would never return?
This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything is cynically permitted.
—
If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In a world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht).
If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.
Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.
What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing. We need take no more note of it than of a war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century, a war that altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a hundred thousand blacks perished in excruciating torment.
Will the war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century itself be altered if it recurs again and again, in eternal return?
It will: it will become a solid mass, permanently protuberant, its inanity irreparable.
If the French Revolution were to recur eternally, French historians would be less proud of Robespierre. But because they deal with something that will not return, the bloody years of the Revolution have turned into mere words, theories, and discussions, have become lighter than feathers, frightening no one. There is an infinite difference between a Robespierre who occurs only once in history and a Robespierre who eternally returns, chopping off French heads.
Let us therefore agree that the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature. This mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.
Not long ago, I caught myself experiencing the most incredible sensation. Leafing through a book on Hitler, I was touched by some of his portraits: they reminded me of my childhood. I grew up during the war; several members of my family perished in Hitler’s concentration camps; but what were their deaths compared with the memories of a lost period in my life, a period that would never return?
This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything is cynically permitted.
—
If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In a world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht).
If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.
Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.
What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Statement of Intent-FIRST DRAFT
Mysteries of the Occult.
I want to use this project to share my own interest in life, death, decomposition and the beauty in the world around us. I hope to communicate the overwhelming juxtaposition of information and mystery in the world around us. Wiccan culture and alchemy experiments are two themes I find most interesting to explore. Wicca for it's appreciation of the world and alchemy for it's hopeful attempts to make something out of supposed nothing.
I want to use this project to share my own interest in life, death, decomposition and the beauty in the world around us. I hope to communicate the overwhelming juxtaposition of information and mystery in the world around us. Wiccan culture and alchemy experiments are two themes I find most interesting to explore. Wicca for it's appreciation of the world and alchemy for it's hopeful attempts to make something out of supposed nothing.
Known as "natural mummification" it is the process by which corpses are naturally preserved. There are many different environments where natural mummification occurs, the extremely cold, very dry environments, and bogs are all places in which bodies will, rather then rot away, mummify often only to be found thousands of years later. In the case of the Guanajuato mummies, they only had to wait a few hundred years, and were not so much discovered as evicted.
Starting in 1865 and lasting all the way until 1958, the small town of Guanajuato, Mexico required that relatives pay a grave tax. When the relatives failed to do so for three years in a row, their deceased loved ones were promptly dug up and evicted. Weirdly, due to the extremely dry conditions of the soil and burial procedures the corpses often came up as well preserved if shrunken mummies. (The first to be dug up and found mummified was one Dr. Remigio Leroy on June 9, 1865.) The cemetery kept these strange mummified corpses in an underground --actually under the cemetery grounds itself -- ossuary in case the relatives came around with the money wanting a re-burial. By 1894, the ossuary had racked up enough mummified bodies to re-brand itself as a museum.
Though the practice ended in 1958 (three years before the first man flew in space) the mummies continued to be kept in the local ossuary/museum. In 1970 a Mexican B-Horror movie was produced: "Santo Versus the Mummies of Guanajuato" starring masked wrestler Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta. This made the mummies known to Mexican's but it wasn't until 1990 that foreign began trickling in, paying the cemetery workers a few bucks to let them in.
The mummies, because they were formed naturally, are much more gruesome looking then your standard Egyptian mummy. With gaunt and twisted faces like extras from a horror movie, and often covered in the tattered rags they were buried in, the mummies stand, lean and recline in glass cases throughout the museum. Perhaps the most shocking to visitors are the shrunken children mummies, and one in particular claimed to be "the world's smallest mummy" is no bigger then a loaf of bread. It is still unknown what exactly it is about the soil or the environment of this particular cemetery that produces so many natural mummies, and the mystery has given way to many superstitions about the mummies. A common local belief is that the mummification is divine punishment for acts committed while alive.
There is a gift shop that sells sugar skulls and effigies of the mummies.
Starting in 1865 and lasting all the way until 1958, the small town of Guanajuato, Mexico required that relatives pay a grave tax. When the relatives failed to do so for three years in a row, their deceased loved ones were promptly dug up and evicted. Weirdly, due to the extremely dry conditions of the soil and burial procedures the corpses often came up as well preserved if shrunken mummies. (The first to be dug up and found mummified was one Dr. Remigio Leroy on June 9, 1865.) The cemetery kept these strange mummified corpses in an underground --actually under the cemetery grounds itself -- ossuary in case the relatives came around with the money wanting a re-burial. By 1894, the ossuary had racked up enough mummified bodies to re-brand itself as a museum.
Though the practice ended in 1958 (three years before the first man flew in space) the mummies continued to be kept in the local ossuary/museum. In 1970 a Mexican B-Horror movie was produced: "Santo Versus the Mummies of Guanajuato" starring masked wrestler Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta. This made the mummies known to Mexican's but it wasn't until 1990 that foreign began trickling in, paying the cemetery workers a few bucks to let them in.
The mummies, because they were formed naturally, are much more gruesome looking then your standard Egyptian mummy. With gaunt and twisted faces like extras from a horror movie, and often covered in the tattered rags they were buried in, the mummies stand, lean and recline in glass cases throughout the museum. Perhaps the most shocking to visitors are the shrunken children mummies, and one in particular claimed to be "the world's smallest mummy" is no bigger then a loaf of bread. It is still unknown what exactly it is about the soil or the environment of this particular cemetery that produces so many natural mummies, and the mystery has given way to many superstitions about the mummies. A common local belief is that the mummification is divine punishment for acts committed while alive.
There is a gift shop that sells sugar skulls and effigies of the mummies.
Sunday 19 February 2012
SPIRIT EXPERIMENTS
Edison, though materialist-minded, was yet willing to accept spiritual beliefs if they could be proven by scientific tests. Here is described one of his amazing secret experiments whereby he sought to lure spirits from beyond the grave and trap them with super-sensitive instruments.
ONE black, howling wintry night in 1920, ”just such a night when superstitious people would bar their doors and windows against marauding ghosts ”Thomas Edison, the famous inventive wizard, gathered a small group of scientists in his laboratory to witness his secret attempts to lure spirits from beyond the grave and trap them with instruments of incredible sensitivity.
Until recently only the few favored spectators ever knew the outcome of this sensational experiment. Only the few Edison intimates, assembled like members of a mystic clan, ever knew what unearthly forms materialized in the scientist’s laboratory that night to give proof or disproof of existence beyond the grave.
For thirteen years results of Edison’s astounding attempt to penetrate that wall that lies beyond mortality have been withheld from the world, but now the amazing story can be told.
In a darkened room in his great laboratory, surrounded with beakers, generators, and other experimental equipment, Edison set up a photo-electric cell. A tiny pencil of light, coming from a powerful lamp, bored through the darkness and struck the active surface of this cell, where it was transformed instantly into a feeble electric current. Any object, no matter how thin, transparent or small, would cause a registration on the cell if it cut through the beam.
When the experiment was ready to begin the spiritualists in the group of witnesses were called upon to summon from eternity the etherial form of one or two of its inhabitants, and command the spirit to walk across the beam. Then while the spiritualists went through their rites the scientists watched intently the meter of the electric eye, which would flicker the instant any ghostly form interrupted the light beam.
Spirits Remain in Eternity
Tense hours were spent watching the delicate instruments for the slightest indication of a spirit form, but none came. The wind howled around the corners of the laboratory building, the spiritualists exorcised, but the ghosts, if any, remained in their abode in eternity. Narrowed scientific eyes saw the meter’s needle remain steady as a rock.
It was because of these negative results that the news of the amazing experiments was never given out to the world. Edison would not reveal his belief-shattering discoveries to a believing world.
The great inventor was a realist and his experiment revealed the stony silence his profound mind expected to find. If spiritual entities existed Edison believed that they should have some of the attributes of ordinary matter. Hence his belief that if spirits existed they could be detected by the electric eye.
It was Edison’s belief, even up to the day of his death, that life in man and animal results from the activity of countless myriads of what he called “immortal units,” endowed with intelligent direction of life and its processes.
To substantiate his hypothesis, Edison burnt his finger intentionally! (Before the finger was burned, however, the scientist had a Bertillion print made of his digit.) The burn was severe enough to obliterate all the delicate skin lines, yet after the finger had healed, another print showed that the lines and whorls, even though they had been hopelessly destroyed, had returned to their original position.
From this experiment, Edison got confirmation of his hypothesis that it is these aforementioned “immortal units” which supervised the regrowth of his finger skin, following out the original design. Man, he believed, is a mosaic of such life units, and it is these entities which determine what we shall be.
To make his hypothesis clear, Edison was wont to cite the following analogy. Suppose this earth were visited by some extraterrestrial being whose eyes were so coarse that the smallest thing he could see was the Brooklyn bridge. Naturally he would take the structure as some sort of natural growth.
Now suppose this imaginary giant were to destroy the bridge, then, after a couple of years, find it rebuilt. Don’t you suppose the giant would assume that some guiding intelligence were behind the reconstruction? That’s what Edison believed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)