Lost Directions
by danny Tuesday, Jul 24 2018, 9:53pm
international /
prose /
post
It amuses me no end how modern man attempts to interpret ancient cave and rock ‘paintings’ with little or no appreciation of the cultural mindsets that created them. Some Australian rock paintings are tens of thousands of years old. They portray the hunt, tribal totems and the first intrusion of Europeans in the north, it should be remembered that the Dutch colonised Indonesia hundreds of years before Cook ‘discovered’ Australia, conveniently following maps and stories of Portuguese and Dutch sailors, in other words Cook discovered what was already discovered, however, British jails were overflowing and the usual dumping ground, America, was undergoing political unrest/rebellion, so newly colonised Australia became the next dumping ground for unwanted convicts, which were mercilessly put to slave labour to build a British outpost in the South Pacific from scratch. But I digress though putting the record straight was necessary, Cook did not discover Australia, the Portugese did in 1616, though in actual fact the local Aborigines clearly discovered and settled the land from coast to coast and inhabited all climatic regions from the tropical, temperate and burning deserts thousands of years earlier.
And it is the paintings -- magical representations -- of the first inhabitants to which I refer.
It becomes obvious to sensitive minds what these representations mean or are, and they are not paintings in the modern sense, though today aboriginal art has been commodified and commercialised. They are in fact magical and ‘religious’ symbols, not drawn for aesthetic purposes but for magical purposes. This behaviour, creating magical representations, is shared by ALL traditional ancient cultures.
So what purpose/function do they reflect? Survival in the material world and conduits to other worlds, mostly.
Consider the much referred to paintings in France created by ‘primitives,’ the style, flow and free movement of the hand is quite remarkable for what experts believe to be no more than ‘ape-men.’ While we may admire the aesthetic today, they were not painted to please, or demonstrate skills, they were painted in order to survive; the many beasts portrayed were food sources and by portraying the beasts in the hunt, early man translated that process into capturing the real beasts in the field in order to supply food for the community. The same applies to Australian paintings and all other native ‘art.’
What we are dealing with or analysing is what we term today, “sympathetic magic”. Early man instinctively believed that his representations connected to the actual beast via focus and imagination and facilitated in its actual capture for food in the ‘real’ world, though reality in ancient times was not conveniently demarked, as Australia’s “dreamtime” creation myths indicate. The ‘real’ material world and the interior world were mutually effective and had equal status without borders, hence the sympathetic art produced for practical purposes, which was taken to sophisticated levels by Australian natives which were the only known culture to develop X-ray paintings.
If one becomes sensitive to these works they begin to ‘speak’ which was another function, to record existential history and it is not coincidence that this practice was universal even though early cultures had no contact between continents.
So rather than dismiss and/or commodify these works, they should be appreciated for what they are as they live, so to speak, no separation existed between the real and the dream, as modern linear time, which creates space and borders did not exist as we know it today, in fact some native cultures attributed the dreamworld with a higher status than the material world. But what of functionality as everything produced was designed for a reason, survival, continuity and social coherence, and the delivery medium’s which were spontaneously chosen were visual, paintings and sculptured totems, auditory, music, song and manifest, as dance, which ‘art’ forms are common to all early cultures. It is a shame that modern man is now spiritually bankrupt and deprives himself of the connection of living traditions that were/are reproduced daily in art song and dance.
Consider the pathetic substitutes today, text based religions, and gadgets, (iPhones etc) which serve to actually disconnect the entity from self, nature and their interconnected harmonies.
There are no secrets regarding contemporary violent cultures, once disconnected humankind endures LOSS, horrible torment and existential pain, and so we have the lunatic, modern or post-modern spiritually bankrupt, totally destructive world of today, which pursues nihilism after its fantasies and illusions are stripped naked.
It would seem supremely sensible to reconnect humankind with continuous existence in which our ancient forebears lived, so I here offer a choice.
Whatever one desires within reason can be accomplished but desire alone is not sufficient, imagine what you want and are capable of and then perform the correct functions -- you would note there are no depictions of men flying or other absurdities in ancient pre-civilisation cultures because they were pragmatic, supreme realists while maintaining strong connections to dream, imagination and other ‘existences’ -- compare with modern, lost man today that believes man can fly unaided because some fiction writer encoded it in a text. Of course challenge any believer to emulate that flying, which the protagonist of those fiction stories claims will be accomplished by belief, faith, hope and grace, which if one cares to notice are all PASSIVE concepts/terms -- now have you ever tried to build a house passively, just waiting and surrendering to an illusion, maybe, but be realistically assured that the house would not be built without active participation and constructive action, doh! Yet the irrational belief in man flying unaided persists, why? Simply due to the fact mankind has lost connection to his essential nature/self, which is in harmony with universal nature or the continuous creative process. Leave those that believe in absurdities to suffer as the preposterous, DISCONNECTED believers they are, as they usually refuse to learn.
Now for the proof in the pudding. I need not create a fantastical method or new formula as the tried and tested methods of ancients are supremely effective.
First imagine what you realistically know to be achievable, then create your own very minimalist visual image, sigil or magical totem that relates/depicts your wish to you, associate that image with a sound or very short phrase (mantra), also associated with the desired outcome and sing it audibly while you focus on the image. Use your dead time constructively, do this mentally while on train or bus trips to work etc. Understand this method WORKS, modern man would not exist if our early forebears faltered. Continue this process while ‘hunting’ the outcome practically. In other words, mind, imagination and physical activity align to produce an achievable result/reality.
With practice all your realistic ambitions become real-ised and your personal powers, sensitivity, awareness etc develop to a remarkable degree. Now to a rather humorous anecdote.
A few years back I was stopped on the street by female Mormon missionaries, as I was interested in the formation of this modern cult, I complied to their innocuous requests up to a point. During these sessions I noticed one of the girls took a fancy, which she awkwardly attempted to hide. Shortly thereafter during my quiet moments a vivid imagine of this girl masturbating frantically while imaging me as the target of her volcanic repressed desires, appeared in my mind, there was no mistaking the connection of this visual image with the real world, so the next time I saw her I said, “do you know that when you masturbate frenetically imagining a person you’re having sex with you establish a connection to the person imagined, I am able to see you masturbating as clear as a movie, as your sexual energy is huge.”
Needless to say she nearly died of shock from exposure, she blushed a colour I had never seen a human take, grabbed her missionary partner and departed at speed. There was no mistaking her response to my otherworldly, revealed reality. The fact that I could consciously clearly see the process immunised me from her strong desire, had I not been AWARE, I could have easily been drawn into and succumbed to her unconscious magical wish. However, the occurrence did demonstrate something I was already very familiar with, it’s innate in all humans.
So if you want to achieve and you have not been consciously or unconsciously practicing the method, give it a try and persist -- you have nothing to lose and much to gain, but you must persist, it works and is easily proven.
The Magician, his training and work -- W E Butler
<< back to stories
|