A Sacred and Visionary Art Primer

Jan 7, 2010 Daniel Mirante in Uncategorized 8 Comments

By Daniel Mirante

Surveying the phenomena of Art, we are presented with great swathes of changing styles, motifs, mythology and techne. Art is a map of itself, displaying the transformations of human consciousness throughout and beyond history. In the present times we stand amidst something like an exciting Cambrian explosion of artistic exploration. It is as if all of history is being gathered up and expresses itself simultaniously. One line of development is known as ‘visionary art‘. What visionary art is, and how we can understand this phenomena, is the question explored here.

visionary art cannot be delineated as a discreet modern movement, or genre of art, a Californian scene, owned by an art clique. Visionary art is an expression of profound and mysterious levels of consciousness. And it is ancient, the ‘original art’, whos function is to continually revive and resurrect a profound respect of mystery within the matrix of culture…

Is visionary art a contemporary art genre? Is visionary art a psychedelic or neo-surrealst revival ? Visionary art is much older. It may include recent stylistic waves, but it transcends them. This is because visionary elements and energies can be found across the spectrum across the arts, across all times and places. Thus, visionary art cannot be delineated as a discreet modern movement, or genre of art, a Californian scene, owned by an art clique. Visionary art is an expression of profound and mysterious levels of consciousness. And it is ancient, the ‘original art’, whos function is to continually revive and resurrect a profound respect of mystery within the matrix of culture, helping humanity realize itself, as Blake put it, in ‘the aspect of eternity‘.

The Nature of Imagination

‘Visionary’ refers to a kind of Sight. But what is being seen ? ‘Visionary’ is a kind of ‘in-sight’, an ‘eye of Wisdom’. In terms of esoteric anatomy, It is a ’3rd eye’ that sits between the two petals of the ajna chakra, the two lobes of the brain, and is thus an intermediary or axial point between the polarities of reason and intuition, which it synthesises to arrive at a new Vision.

Henry Corbin, the Sufi mystic and philosopher of religion, coined the term ‘Imaginal‘, to describe such a vision and distinguish it from the merely imaginary wanderings of daydream. Through a higher synthesis, the world, both inner as well as outer, is beheld in a profound and extraordinary way, that despite its fantastic features, is not a flight of fancy.

The ‘visionary realm’ has a kind of validity, unlike our usual understanding of ‘hallucination’. By convention most people ascribe no particular value or meaning to hallucinations. At the same time we have a long history, passed down by poets, mystics, mythologers, healers, and adventurers, of transformative experiences that touch the realm of the transcendent or fantastic, and which hold an immense profundity and value for those encountering such states of being.

‘Visionary’ can be correlated to ‘mythic consciousness’. Ceremony and art can bring about mythic consciousness, and help develop a sense of the Sacred. Mythic consciousness is where the dichotomies of being are reconciled into a higher unity, which is open or transparent to paradox and mystery. It is Wisdom itself.

To be the experiencer of Visions is not the same as hallucinating. Because, through some virtue, the visionary can pertain to humanities deepest existential enquiries. It is not a disordering of consciousness but a very special capacity within us to understand the world in ways beyond our typical rational categories – the visionary has cohesive, informational, poetical, intuitive and multi-dimensional value. Through such a higher consciousness, what the Integrative Philosopher Ken Wilber called ‘Vision-Logic’, the world arrays itself symbolically into a splendor of wisdom – which the Sufi Gnostics termed the Alam-I-Mythal, or the Alam-I-Malakut, the realm of Myth, the realm of Sacred Vision.

Traditional cultures honoured the value of the capacity of the Human to enter into numinous relating with the Infinite, by collectively encouraging the generation of sacred art through temple building, the creation of monuments, icons, sculptures, and colorful rites and festivals. Sacred art can clothe itself in everyday or contemporary forms, and abstract or impressionistic forms. Conversely it may be overtly sacred in a religious sense, expressing itself through the established iconography of archetypes such as saints, buddhas, and spiritual deities, presented through established motifs. There is something in the deepest sacred art that goes beyond the traditional conditioning of the everyday consciousness and worldview of the society that surround it.

The Contemporary Context

In the contemporary context, we live within a dynamic and rapid process of globalization. The melting down of traditional axioms accompanies this process. Absolutisms of various sorts, nationalism, ethnocentrism, myths of ethnic or gender superiority, have liquefied into relativism and plurality. As a consequence we experience Great Weirdness. The human mind is set adrift in strange oceans of possibility. As old orders dissolve, as ideals become outmoded, as symbols are set adrift from their traditional moorings, they mix, recombine and create new totems and lineages, many of which are unstable, unviable, but many of which contain elements of viability, elements that will perpetuate.

Visionary art emerges as a potent influence in such an environment, because it connects to a more abiding and inclusive reality than nationalism or fundamentalism, or else, the ‘smart grid’ of bio-mechanical modernist doctrines, emergent from corporate, product-orientated science. Much art is now driven not by high ideals but by commerce, trend, and titillation. Such art can be entertaining in a limited sense but rarely strikes to the heart of the matter. It is rarely enduring. It is anchored to a narrow window of time, a transient context of trend.

The Paradox of the Sacred in Post-Modernity

But what is ‘sacred’ ? From a relativist, post-modern perspective, is can be argued that what is sacred to one person, is not necessarily sacred for another, and may even be found offensive. The trouble with such a perspective is it removes the meaning from symbols, from archetypes, from the power of shared value and intention. It could be argued that a relativist outlook has the advantage of permitting a tolerance, but what kind of tolerance, if there is the assumption that a holy symbol or sacred tradition is really no more sacred than anything else ? We see, for example, much patronising scientism from educated atheists toward people of religious tendencies. Many dogmatic atheists do not seem to understand the levels of meaning and transpersonal depth within religious symbols, and judge religions by the worst of their fundamentalist adherants.

From an absolutist perspective, the Sacred is a universal, fixed and true ontological prime. The trouble with such a perspective is it lends toward fundamentalism, rigidity of thought, and provincialism. Symbols can be taken too literally and become objects to promote and defend. One persons set of symbols becomes ‘true’ and anothers abjectly false, misleading, dangerous, even diabolical. The advantage to absolutism is that there is at least opportunity for a genuine honouring of Ideals, and scope for true meaning, and mysteries accessible through development of virtues, within the human experience. It is a position that says “Some things are more Holy than Others” – for instance, Jesus Christ is ‘more sacred’ than Mickey Mouse, the wisdom of the Sufi is ‘more sacred’ than CNN or Fox News.

From my point the problem is even deeper than a “customer-ism” of “I like ” or “I don’t like”… The bigger difference in types of art is in the ‘transcendental question’. Is the art Transcendental or not? A transcendental ability is an inherent human feature… A dehumanized art is non-transcendental. Since the highest expression of humanity and the crown of the human soul itself is the ‘Transcendence ability’ which distingushes humans from beasts. A beast, which has no any chance to come to Enlightenment and Salvation. So, a presence of the Transcendence in art it is the most important factor of estimation of an Art itself. Oleg Korolev

Right Wing of ‘St John’ by Hans Memling

The Absolute and Relative perspectives are difficult to combine. Somehow both the positions are ‘true’ – alchemically, a ‘coincidentia oppositorum’ ; higher truths are paradoxical ; containing and integrating seemingly contradictory forces – beyond duality. Yes, there is a diversity in how the sacred is expressed across different cultures and times. This does not mean what these symbols point to is an arbitrary figment or construction. There are commonalities across cultures, archetypes, that speak to the unwavering archaic and innate aspects of human consciousness involved in the Sacred : love, union and transcendence.

Sacred art, either formal or informal, differs from profane art is in an acknowledgement of the mystery, complexity, poetry and scope of human experience. It is polyphasic – experiencing from multiple levels of consciousness, not simply the rational, which tends to cut and divide the flowing nature of phenomenological reality – that is to say, life as it is lived, not life as it is intellected.

Sacred art (and the medicine culture it arises from) points the way beyond the prevailing assumptions of the age, affirming orders of consciousness, nature and experience that are unrecognized or even actively denied within the surrounding culture.

The Mind at the Edge of Itself

Many of the old masters were both technically and spiritually inspired and focused. However, Sacred Intention, and Sacred Result, can be evident in art that is without substantially advanced material skill. Again, conversely it can exist in some of the most technically and skillfully executed art that exists. What makes the difference between a sacred and profane art is that a force or energy is brought forth, which through its contemplation leads the mind to the edge of itself, where one may glimpse and feel subtle energies and ideals usually beyond its common scope.

“The external forms of devotion concealed occult truths. Delville considered the true artist to be an initiate who would present images which would teach and transform human nature; Artists were to become priests and prophets.” -
J.Howe ~ “Jean Delville: Belgian Symbolist”

Artists of the sacred may bring through truly novel visions, or else breathe in fresh energies into the realms of ancient religious symbols, numinous archetypes of the species mind, en-lighting them from within through channelling energies from the Source, from direct experience of what they truly represent. This resurrects the guiding and orientating power of such symbols. By bringing awareness, prayer, feeling into each brushstroke, the sacred artist paints a visible prayer. This is evocation, the evocation of spirit into the medium. Art acts as a registry of rare, subtle emotions and contemplations, mysterious, effervescent and high frequency.

“Art is the true kingdom. If your hand has drawn a perfect line, the cherubim themselves come down from heaven and see themselves in it as if in a mirror. Spiritual drawing, soulful line, filled form, you give physical shape to our dreams” -
Christian Rebisse states in his essay “Histoire du Rosicrucianisme des origines jusqu’à nos jours” [Revue Rose Croix A.M.O.R.C.-France 1998]

Sacred and visionary art may clothe itself in the styles of the time in which it arises, but is transparent to mystery beyond history, transparent to primordial, innate processes concerned with root dynamics of consciousness, life and creation, therefore, full of the resonance of the Eternal, the Divine. Such art necessarily pertains to the archaic in its true sense of the word – referring to beginnings, like a stem cell: the un-crystallized unfixed, supple germinal state, where alternate continuums and growth templates can emerge to guide us beyond the cyclopean vision of progress defined in purely techno-socio-economic terms.

The deep ecology and permaculture movement, the ascent of the Divine Feminine, the explication of occult and alchemical knowledge, the emergence of traditional shamanic plant medicines into the Occident, are all aspects of what has been called an Archaic Revival. In visionary art, linear history has already dissolved into the glowing and numinous coral reef structures of primordial fractal time, returning us to awareness of the myriad realities accessible from the ground-zero of the present moment.