Mythic Naturalism

What is Mythic Naturalism I hear you ask. This is a term coined by talented artist Jonathon Earl Bowser to describe the beauty of nature, of the cosmos and particularly the feminine. His works of art send shivers down my spine; they possess such beauty. The following information is taken from his website as it is appropriate that you hear from Jonathon himself.

Many believe the cosmos has no meaning; it is an accident that should not have been and nothing more. And there are also many, myself among them, who believe that in an "accidental" universe we should expect to find considerably less comprehensibility in the world than there is. We feel compelled to ask the question: "Whence came the orderly design of a universe that inexplicably conforms to our profound desire to classify and categorize it?" At every scale of observation, from the atomic to the galactic, the universe reveals itself to consist entirely of archetypal forms (like the active periphery forever revolving around the still center) or Meta-Patterns: inexplicable relations which bind the bewildering diversity of existence - time and space, matter and energy, eternal law and temporal nature, religion and science, woman and man - into a knowable, yet ever inscrutable Unity. I believe the prevalence of these universal Meta-Patterns is meant to serve some guiding purpose, and thus, everything means something...

Whence have we come, and where do we go?

What do we seek, and what do we know?

Is time a line, with beginning and end?

Or is it a round, yet subtle of bend?

Is Cosmos a tomb, no meaning thereof?

Or a Dream of a Song of The Goddess of Love?

Humanity stands by celestial shore,

Is this the first time? Have we failed before?

Maybe it seems that The Darkness is deep,

That sorrow is real and longing for sleep,

Yet music plays hushed, in this night cold and long,

Let us dance in the tomb, to the tune of Her Song...

Veiled in the struggle between all things that are separate and apart, is a Celestial Romance of The Two who seek Unity...

The Ancient Well

Creation from primordial Chaos. The Maiden and the Serpent (by which mankind falls from paradise, and sex and death come into the world). The World Tree. Spiral 7. The Fire Theft. The great Deluge which cleanses the earth. The World Mountain (from which the cosmic law descends). The Miraculous Conception of the Redeemer. The 12 that circumscribe the Center One. The Beckoning 9. The Death and Resurrection of the Redeemer. The Dark Lord of the Underworld. The Hero's Quest in the Underworld Labyrinth. The Dragon Guardian of the Treasure Cave. The Trinity with an Unseen Forth. The Rapture, end of time, and return of/to the Kingdom of God...

Such stories are familiar to most people of European descent. We often think of them as our property - the spiritual heritage of (and exclusive to) the west. Bible stories. But they are , in fact, the primary archetypes of human belief - the universal human response to the ineffable mystery of being. And we have had these same visions of the transcendent - ancient beyond reckoning - in every corner of the globe: Dynastic Egypt, Archaic and Classical Greece and Rome, Mesopotamia and the Levant, Persia, Celtic Europe, Viking Scandinavia, Vedic India, Confucian China, Africa, Oceania, and pre-Columbian America.

The same images, the same motifs, continue still, as they have for least 25,000 years of human development, to bubble up from the impenetrable depths of an ancient and universal Well of Sacredness. So many different buckets have drawn from the same Divine Waters, and still we say, "Only my water can satisfy the need of those who thirst..."

What are some of the qualities of these waters? What knowledge yet lies hidden in those remote depths? Perhaps when we learn to identify the nutrients in the waters, they will truly serve as they were intended: to sustain life in the pursuit of...?

The Dance of Yin and Yang

Humanity has always been looking for something illusive and ethereal: certainty, peace, wisdom, meaning ... And reality has usually confounded our best efforts. The rational conscious mind attempts to impose its logical perspective on the exterior world; but meaning is only found in the interior depths of the intuitive, unconscious mind, with its abstract mythological world view. Even civilization itself is forever in search of an answer. What is the way that we might reach our full potential? Is it conservatism, looking back pragmatically, with an as-it-is world view? Or is it liberalism, looking forward idealistically, with an as-it-should-be perspective? Are the answers in the past (traditions that have successfully guided us for untold thousands of generations) or in the future (new solutions to old problems that always seemed to have no answer)? Is it we as individuals that should change, or society as a collective? Is the deficiency that we seek to correct in the biology of human nature, or the sociology of human interaction?

Some believe that salvation is found in strength: it is the Power of acquisition, aggression, and aspiration that will secure for us a place in this competitive world; the alternative is weakness - and despair. Others believe that salvation is found in compassion: it is the Beauty of mercy, tenderness, and serenity that will redeem and sustain the fragile human spirit. For them, the alternative is cruelty - and despair. But such views are interdependent, for neither philosophy can long endure without the other. At the extremes, we shall either consume ourselves, or be consumed by others. Somehow we must walk a path in the valley below 2 treacherous ranges that forever threaten to collapse and destroy us. Like Icarus, we must be wary of both the turbulent ocean waves below, and the blazing solar heat above, if we are to avoid a similar fate. But what are these 2 ways?

Courage and Circumspection. Strength and Compassion. Politics and Art. History and Poetry. Adapting to the future and Preserving the past. Linear and Cyclical. Objective and Subjective. Logical rationalism and Mythological intuition. The Outward Path and the Inward Path. Aspiration and the active process of becoming, and Acceptance and the quiescent state of being.

The duality of our own experience and being, is an inevitable extension of the dualistic nature of the cosmos. Such dual forces are the sum of the universe, and they exist in both perpetual conflict and mutual interdependence; that which cannot be reconciled, nevertheless seeks eternally for reconciliation - oneness with its opposite. As positive proton must reconcile with negative electron to create matter and thus begin the infinite cosmic dance, as the conscious and the unconscious mind must coordinate their apprehensions to realize the full magnitude of human potential, as the male half and the female half must join and in wholeness create the unity that is Life, so too must all the monopoles in the universe dance with their appointed partner. And so we play our part in this infinitely complex, infinitely mysterious opera, but what is it that the universe is trying to achieve?

Mysterium Tremendum

The modern world now understands that 4 fundamental physical forces hold the cosmos together, but what holds those forces together? How do they know how much force to exert in their function? What keeps these stupefyingly subtle constants of nature...constant? Why doesn't the universe simply fly apart? Why do all physical phenomena - and the ethereal laws that mediate all material phenomena - possess some pattern or classifiable quality that indicates a relationship with something else, a higher meaning and presence waiting to be understood? Why should something as simple as the relationship between a circle's interior and exterior (circumference divided by diameter = pi - 3.14...) appear so frequently in descriptions of the cosmos?

The universe is an infinitely intricate tapestry of relationships and associations. But why should anything be analogous? What is the compelling will that binds separate and distinct things into unexpected unities? Why does the dynamic, ever-changing and chaotic universe reveal - upon close inspection - orderly patterns indicative of something designed? What reason can there be that the universe so very much appears as though it has a function, serves a purpose? To what end are all 4 of the fundamental forces (strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity) ever so slowly (over cosmic time) assembling an edifice of ever greater complexity and sophistication? As we observe this cosmos (that very much appears to evolve contrary to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics) we are confronted by a perniciously simple question: What is the universe building?

There is a great hierarchy that the cosmos is constructing, with each step in evolution involving both a statistically impossible concatenation of events, and exquisitely balanced forces to hold the constituent pieces in place. Guided by the perfection of some unseen celestial blueprint, smaller, less complex forms come together to form larger, more sophisticated forms. The resulting phenomena is not merely quantitatively but qualitatively different than the constituent parts. The new form is an order of magnitude more versatile and adaptable in its function; each new level is an exponential expansion of variety and potential: 1) free quarks into hadrons, 2) leptons and hadrons into atoms, 3) atoms into molecules, 4) molecules into compounds, 5) compounds into organisms, 6) organisms into consciousness, 7) consciousness into civilization, and 8) civilization into...?

What is this Meta-Force that compels all things together, like a conductor introducing new instruments - one at a time - to a slowly swelling symphony that must eventually erupt, in a thunderous crescendo of rapturous harmony? What is this Song of the White Goddess drifting across the celestial ocean of space and time, inflaming the soul of the Red Lord?

It is upon this irresistible attraction that all the universe is predicated: it draws the blossom to the sun, and the sun to the morning horizon; it draws the misty raiment up to shroud the mountain summits of the world, only to fall as the rains which nourish the bountiful river plains; it draws the stallion to the mare, and the mare to her foal; it draws the brain to mind, and the mind to wisdom. What word can we apply to such Divine Force? How are we describe this miraculous process by which the Creator conducts the Transcendent Will of the cosmos, summoning all things into a great cosmic dance of Eternal Regeneration? There could be only one word for such absolute Beauty: Love.

There is a Grand Order toward which the cosmos aspires, that motivates its quest to be greater tomorrow than it is today. And how do we know - intuitively - that we are meant to make a contribution to this cosmic aspiration? Hundreds of millions of people - each one the product of 100 billion generations of natural selection and survival of the fittest - are enchanted by something seemingly peripheral to life: the Mystery of Being. It is surely no coincidence that this curious trait - common to all peoples of the world - has survived catastrophes and extinctions, mutations and adaptations, and the capricious whim (so Darwinists tell us) of the cold, unfeeling, statistical, and quite accidental process of evolution. In exactly the same way that carbon "knows" how to construct life, life "knows" how to create new potential and new possibilities.

We are feeling, reasoning, decision-making beings, possessed of free will and a moral imperative - due to our fall from the innocence of nature where no evil exists; and we are meant to comprehend the cosmos. For reasons that may forever elude us, the cosmos needs to be known. In the vast emptiness of the celestial ocean, humanity is a treasure of inestimable value, an Elysian oasis lost in an endless and implacable desert - and equally as fragile and ever-threatened. In an extraordinary cosmic irony, it is we tiny, insignificant beings that give meaning to the stupefying infinitude of space. It is only be virtue of the vanishingly small that the incomprehensibly vast might be known. We have important work to do here, and it will require extraordinary self knowledge to both discern our destiny, and survive to see its fruition.

Mysterium Microcosm

There are mysteries closer to home. Each day, in the process of living, we are compelled to reconcile the dichotomies of our human existence. We must learn to co-ordinate the divided activities of left and right, aggression and nurturance, intellect and emotion, pragmatism (the reality of what is) and idealism (the potential of what could be), or even ethereal mind and material body. Perhaps one of the most difficult things we will ever do is bridge the gulf between our conscious, self-determined aspirations, and our unconscious, nature-determined instincts. We know, perhaps without really understanding why, that those who are able to integrate seemingly these incompatible halves into a paradoxical, yet oddly harmonious whole, are the most admirable, and noble of people. Aristotle succinctly defined this principle: Every virtue is a balance of two extremes. But why is this even more ancient, yet simple truth...true? Beyond our myopic perceptions of opposites, beyond our clumsy struggles to mediate the efficient interaction of this and that, exists only the undivided cosmos - the unity of the Singular Absolute.

Any verbal language is insufficient, when seeking to communicate these abstract notions of life, the cosmos, and the meaning of existence. We simply don't have the depth of experience, or the frame of reference required to make a comprehensive description with mere words. And so, since early pre-history, we spoke of such things in a less literal, but more versatile language: Myth - the universal symbolic language of the unconscious mind.

A myth is any enduring story that engages the mystery of existence, and thereby seeks to relate the human experience to the divine. It is an expression of the irresistible human need to touch - and comprehend in the touching - some of the sacredness we feel all around us . In our modern technological world, however, myth has become a pejorative term; when we say something is mythical, we mean that it is fictitious - not real. This is a tragic corruption of its original meaning. A myth is not something that is out there in the world waiting to be revealed through archeological revelation. It is not any kind of phenomenal truth that can be apprehended by the senses. A myth lives in the shadow world of the unconscious; it is a Noumenal Truth: like Love, it is a real-world, real-Truth, that can never be proven to exist; it can only be apprehended by the mind. The enlightenment of wisdom and awareness are hidden, waiting to be retrieved from the forbidding labyrinth of the universal dreamscape - the mind itself.

My paintings are an attempt to mythologize the Divine Forces of Nature, engage the ancient Archetypes of Myth, and find new relevance therein for a contemporary, scientifically-literate audience. I am trying to suggest a way in which we can visualize our interaction with, and connection to Immanent Power and Transcendent Beauty. Here - in the embrace of temporal and eternal, of physical and spiritual, of that which moves and that which does not, of masculine and feminine, - are new descriptions of our relationship, not only with the inscrutable cosmos, but with ourselves. For it is not just the universe beyond that is mystifying, but also the universe within...

The Archetypes

The human body has a structure that can be studied and categorized generally as human physiology. Dr. Carl Jung recognized that the human mind also has a structure that can be studied and categorized generally: the psyche consists of inherited - and thus universal - aprior forms and categories of knowledge which are common to all humanity. What we call the Archetypes of Mythology are projections of this eternal dream world of the psyche into the everyday world of our conscious experience. In the same way an arm is an appendage of the body, the Archetypes are an appendage of the mind. These eternal forms of the human mindscape are something like icebergs: an slight indication of what they are protrudes into our conscious awareness, but an unknown magnitude is forever hidden from us in the aqueous depths of our unconscious existence. We perceive only an inscrutable tip of some great knowledge, and this knowledge represents what is grave and constant, immutable and forever in the human condition.

And so it is not surprising that human eyes from all places and all times should have seen the same, universally human reflection of themselves in the Archetypes of the Cosmos: Heaven and Earth, Order and Chaos, Negative (centripetal, pulling-in force) and Positive (centrifugal, pushing-out force), Ethereal (spiritual) and Material (physical), Necessity and Contingency, The Still Center (interior) and the Revolving Periphery (exterior). State of Being and Process of Becoming. We perceive a character in these dichotomies that is a reflection of the primary human dichotomy: Feminine and Masculine.

It has been suggested that to perceive such qualities in human terms is akin to seeing barnyard animals and presidents heads in the shapes of clouds. Humans are, after all, excellent pattern perceivers, and no one would ascribe cosmic relevance to a Nixon-shaped cloud. But the universality of these fundamental qualities is so remote from human experience and understanding that we must abandon any belief that such cosmic dualities are merely anthropomorphic projections. Rather they must be seen for what they are: a blueprint for the universe. It is we - the progeny of the cosmos - who are the reflection: the Archetypes represent not only what is immutable in the human imagination, but in the universe itself. The Archetypes are echoes of the Creator's Voice, and the stories they inform are the accumulated wisdom of 100 billion iterations of organic replication; they are the timeless biography of humanity, Life, the cosmos, and perhaps even the Creator...

The Evolution of Spiritual Thought

At the dawn of civilization, the primary focus of all beliefs was the Mystery of Creation - exemplified in the Feminine. It was the Great Goddess (the White Goddess of the Moon, the Earth Goddess of Fecundity, the Lotus Maiden of Eternity) that was at the center of all human societies. Early humanity saw the sacred relationship between the cycle of the Heavens, and a woman's reproductive cycle: as the moon is consumed by darkness/death, and remains in the darkness/underworld for 3 days before it is reborn anew; as the Earth dies for 3 lunar cycles (the 3 months of winter) and is reborn in the benediction of Spring; so, too, is Life extinguished by death, yet ever reborn as new Life and brought into the world by the Feminine. It was the Virgin Mother Goddess (who, as the First Being, was auto-catalytic in Her own creation and impregnation) that gave birth to all Creation: humanity, Heaven and Earth, the cosmos entire, and all the lesser gods therein. She was the supreme representative of the Mystery of mysteries - the Source from which all life and death, all beauty and power, flows.

This mythopoetic worship of The Goddess - of the beauty, fertility, and mystery of nature - was typical of the early planter societies. For as the plant which dies yields the seed which then grows in the womb of the earth into new life, so too does the father who dies yield the seed planted in a woman which grows into new life. As the Earth provides nourishment for Her children, so, too, do all mothers. Through the eternal, regenerating cycles of the cosmos, all that dies will be reborn again - in new form. And it is through the transforming magic of the Feminine that this Resurrection occurs. This was the spiritual landscape of humanity for at least 10,000 years.

But the pastoral planter societies were easy targets for the predatory warrior nomads who swept down from the north around 2000 B.C. Their martial superiority overwhelmed the simple farmers, and all across Eurasia these horseback raiders established a new kind of society (empire), and a new kind spiritual ethos: patriarchy. Those hunter-folk saw that as the rays of the sun smote the wandering herds of stars traversing the heavens, so too did their spears smote the wandering herds of beasts traversing the earth. Survival did not turn around the mystery of feminine creation and regeneration, but relied rather, on masculine action. They saw meaning in the hunt, not the harvest. Their reality was linear - action and result - not the cyclical repetition of the seasons. These invading warrior-folk eventually conquered all the indigenous settled peoples of Eurasia - or irreversibly influenced them from nearby. And in the realm of the spirit, the ancient Lunar-Feminine deities were conquered likewise, by a new generation of Solar-Masculine deities (ie. the Zeus/Olympian triumph over Gaia and the Titans). This patrifocal system (which, of course, survives to this day) places divinity not in nature, but above it, transcendent to it. And nature (the Feminine) is something to be conquered and subordinated.

In this we have succeeded for a long time. The solar ethos has given us science, law, medicine, exploration, communication, and all the technologies upon which we now rely for our existence. And we enjoy the affluence that is the exclusive product of this ethos. But we are upon the advent of a dangerous epoch, and new rules must apply. If we are to survive, the masculine solar, and the feminine lunar must define a new relationship. Not power or beauty, but a unison in harmony: a soaring duet that finally achieves the full magnitude of human potential.

The Beauty of the blossom cannot exist without the Power of the sun. In the universe, Power is the default setting. It exists by itself, and does not require our stewardship. Power is the universe. But Beauty - that which the universe has labored so very long to achieve, and most desires - must be nurtured into existence. It is too fragile to survive without protection. The Beauty of our world, of our civilization and its achievements, of ourselves and our achievements, now needs that protection - and in a way that has never existed before. Technology has made us vastly powerful, and now the cosmos asks where our allegiance lies: with power and the way of the flesh, or with Beauty and the way of the Spirit; are we to remain lost in the ignorance our own petty ambitions, or shall we seek the enlightenment of accord with the needs of the Grand Design of the universe?

The Two Become One

We have learned in this century, that the fundamental components of the universe, are simultaneously waves and particles. This is one of the more significant aspects of what physicists call "quantum weirdness." Depending merely upon how we choose to make a measurement, the fundamental constituent parts of existence are either continuous waves, or not-continuous particles. How can they be both? It is as though we have been given a choice: "The universe is infinite, and the universe is not infinite - take your pick, where does your allegiance lie? You must be very powerful now, to have penetrated the inner-sanctum of My atom, learned some its secrets. What now will you do with this knowledge? Will you take these tiny things and creatively put them together, or will you destructively blast them apart?" What will our choice be?

Without knowledge of ourselves, and our capacity for self-destruction in such a state of ignorance, our civilization will fast approach the abyss. This is not apocalyptic prophesy in the long Levantine tradition. Many times in history, people have witnessed the gradual (and sometimes not so gradual) collapse of civilization. That was then the limit of our destructive capabilities. One more collapse will almost certainly result in something vastly more catastrophic than merely the loss of social cohesion. We should not have become so powerful without a full understanding of the terrible weapons we now possess - or without a noble cause in service of which such power can be sublimated. Beauty is that Noble Cause.

What is it that suggests there might be more to the world than meets the eye, that there is a sublime and Divine Purpose that lies infinitely beyond, and yet somehow remains within, phenomenality? For some it is a sunrise or a meadow blossom. For others it is the comprehensible, predictable structures of reality - expressible in the transcendent language of mathematics. For some it is the repeating patterns and harmonies of nature. For others it is The Book. For Dante (the great 13th century poet of The Divine Comedy) it was the soul-staggering AWE he felt before the radiant Beauty of Beatrice, that opened his eyes and ears, his heart and mind, to the Divine Grace of The Symphony of God that permeates the cosmos. As for Dante, so too for me, God's revelation came in the form of the Perfection of Woman.

It is the Transcendence of Beauty that inspires me; She is how I seek to embrace the Infinite. My work is about this quest and this paradox. Like so many others, I aspire to engage the Mystery of the Cosmos, the Mystery of Life, the Mystery of the Feminine, the Mystery of Beauty. To me, these are all the same: Beacons of Divinity in Time. I have had a vague - but potent - apprehension of the beauty, symmetry, and order manifest at every scale of observation and intuition; what I seek is a coherent vision of the Transcendent Will that whispered across the face of the waters.

The Archetypes of Mythology are the masks we place upon the Mysterium Tremendum, human-made garments worn by our Gods that we might approach The Unapproachable, know The Unknowable. The Divine Feminine is one of these mytho-poetic coverings. She is the Mother of the Eternal Order manifest in the Forces of Nature, and the Principle of Creation and Regeneration which predicates all that exists. The Maiden of the Lotus is the Vernal Dawn of Spring, the perpetual cycle of new beginning. The Goddess of Love is the Singer of the Celestial Music of the Spheres, by which the will of the universe shall be done, and its destiny achieved. The Cosmic Womb is the still center that draws forth, beckoning the dynamic universe into action and transformation. She is the White Goddess, waiting while the Red Lord endeavors in His brutal, cosmos-building Task; She is the Transcendent Order, waiting in Eternity for Chaos to inexorably traverse the Zodiacal cycle of Time and triumph over the 12 labors of His great Celestial Quest to return Home...

- Jonathon Earl Bowser

Order and Chaos

This painting is inspirational, especially from a Taoist point of view as it applies Jonathon's Mythic Naturalism to the concept of Yin and Yang. A description from Jonathon's website says it all: -

Yin and Yang

The Transcendent Absolute, and the immanent and relative. The Static Eternal and the dynamic temporal. The Infinite and the finite. The Ethereal and the material. Beauty and power. Creation and destruction. The Beginning and the end. Order and chaos.

These are forces in opposition, dualities in conflict, and their manifest utility in the human struggle to comprehend existence is more ancient than written history. The primary visual motif in this image - the T'ai chi T'u (or diagram of the Supreme Ultimate) - is said to have been revealed to Fu Hsi (c. 2850 B.C.), the legendary first emperor of China. His system of philosophy and divination was later elaborated in the I Ching (Book of Changes), one of the oldest and most venerated books in the world (roughly the cultural equivalent of the Hindu Vedas, or the Christian Bible). Fu saw that for every concept there is an opposite concept, and that the entire universe is an endless interaction of such opposites in conflict. The Chinese called these feminine and masculine principles, that together form the sum of the dualistic cosmos, Yin and Yang. This duality symbolizes not just the essential complementarity of reality, but also the origin and fate of all creation.

Yin is the Feminine principle and the Archetype of Beauty: creative, passive and unchanging, intuitive and compassionate. It is the Lunar ethos of endless cycles, the enduring collective, and eternal regeneration. Yang is the Masculine principle and the Archetype of Power: protective (or destructive in the service of new creation), active and evolving, rational and strong. It is the Solar ethos of linear will, the fleeting individual, and the impulse to conquest - before conquest by death. The T'ai-chi depicts these Great Forces in perfect and harmonious balance, each retreating in favor of the other in the eternal dance of the cosmos. And within the heart of each domain lies the seed of the other, indicating that there is no exclusively masculine or feminine nature. (This ancient idea is given new relevance in the modern work of Dr. Carl Jung: in his explorations of the unconscious mind, he describes a feminine aspect of the male psyche - his anima, and a masculine aspect of the female psyche - her animus.) There is only the balance of the two, an eternally cyclical tension between two mutually interdependent and interpenetrating halves of a single whole. They can exist only in relation to, and by virtue of, the existence of the other.

In the eyes of those ancient scholars, this was (and is) a very effective way for categorizing, and thereby better understanding the world. And one aspect cannot be considered subordinate to the other: To endure, power needs beauty, and beauty needs power. This philosophical view - of halves that are only whole in union - has become, after millennia of refinement, a fundamental constant of Chinese and east Asian thought.

A Domain of Activity and Change

Most people would agree that the universe is a chaotic place. In the vast depths of the celestial ocean, suns larger than our entire planetary system can either explode with a radiance that shines brighter than whole galaxies, or implode with such catastrophic ferocity that they crush themselves to infinite density - and right out of existence. The universe is, in fact, a violently chaotic place. In fact, the laws of quantum mechanics (the rules that govern the interactions of fundamental particles like electrons, protons, and photons) state that the material of the universe is fundamentally probabilistic and random. Existence in the domain of the very small is an erratic, intermittent, "fuzzy" property. But we do not need physicists to tell us that all we see is, in its essence, chaos; all we have to do is look around us to know that this is a crazy, unpredictable world. The only certainty seems to be change. Whether one views the world as progressing or retrogressing (that is, descending from or ascending toward a single perfect moment of unity with Divinity), it is indisputably in a perpetual state of flux, always evolving in one direction or the other.

From the free particles created in the infinitely hot explosion of the big bang, to the heavy elements forged in the supernova deaths of stars, to the complex organic compounds cooked up in the boiling cauldrons of thermal pools, to reasoning consciousness and civilization built upon the war-ravaged ruins of our predecessors, the entire history of the universe has been a story of violent activity - one kind of thing subordinated and made to serve within structure of a larger, different kind of thing. In fact, everything in the universe is in a process of becoming - changing from one state to another over time. The cosmos itself is expanding dynamically as it charges ever outward from the explosive point of its birth, penetrating ever deeper into the infinite oblivion that waits eternally to receive it. For these reasons, I have chosen to represent the chaos of the material universe as a manifestation of the Yang principle.

A Domain of Eternal Stillness

But there are a few things quite near to our universe that do not change. The fundamental particles of matter and energy exist in a timeless, eternal state of being: at the instant of their creation, they are all they ever will be. These dimensionless points have mass, spin, and charge, despite the fact that they have no size, and seem to sit upon the boundary between this world and womb of nothingness and non-existence that lies endlessly beyond. Quanta possess no component parts subject to change or revision. The mysterious electron - which is reckoned finite only by the mathematically dubious process of renormalization (multiplying by a negative infinity) - can never evolve or modify in any way. From its birth at the beginning of time, through the hundred billion year journey around the universe, to its final consumption at the end of time, it shall remain infinitely identical to itself, and all other electrons in the cosmos. (So identical that Nobel Laureate, physicist Richard Feynman, once suggested that it might be meaningless to think of them pluralistically: perhaps they are just one electron - a single speck which zips back and forth through space and time to give the appearance of a cosmos assembled of many!)

Of course electrons combine with other particles to make things that do change, but the method by which these accumulations of matter-stuff transform themselves does not. The laws of physics are predictable and immutable. The rules of gravity, time, thermodynamics, chemistry, electro magnetism, and mathematics, are always the same when we wake up in the morning. Why should the laws be the same all the time? And where did those laws come from anyway? Why should so simple, and yet so abstract, a notion as number be able to describe and predict the mechanical operation of the cosmos with such success? How can it be that we find such delightfully ordered and harmonic relationships in the abstract investigation of quantities? Where do these eternal mathematical truths exist? And why should these exquisitely ordered, subjective, incorporeal truths manifest themselves in every chaotic part of the objective, physical world?

We are obligated to address such questions with a concept that is in contrast to the cold, hard experience of the senses. This concept is known by many names: Ptah, Chronos, Ahura Mazda, Jahweh, Brahma, Devi, Vairocana, Shri Lakshmi, Allah, and in the west, God. God is that from which all things came, the Creator of all that is. But, it seems, we are not meant to experience the presence of God directly. We can only admire and revere the little islands of inexplicable beauty in an endless sea of chaos and thereby infer the existence of the Divine Creator. For what else is beauty - the pleasurable harmony of patterns of symmetry - but an expression of order? God is thought of as the Architect of the universe, yet Transcendent and beyond it. God is not changing or evolving in any way, for God is Perfect and Eternal. The inviolable laws of nature (which are antecedent and external to that nature) are forever. All that is in the cosmos is temporal and temporary; it must return to the Eternity from whence it came. In the distant future when all energy is spent and time has consumed even itself, the Force in the Void that has drawn existence ever forward - as gravity draws all things toward the center of the sphere - will receive the seed of the cosmos. The genealogical sum of all that has ever been will pass into the incubating embrace of Cosmic Resolution - that realm where IDEAS gestate before realization. For these reasons, I have chosen to represent the ethereal order which creates the material universe as a manifestation of the Yin principle.

The Domain of Chaos

In this painting the circle of the T'ai-chi, which encloses Yin and Yang, reads clockwise. Time begins with the big bang at 12 O'clock. The trail of Yang is meant to correspond to the evolution of the universe. These concentric rings within the tail of Yang, are meant to represent the vibrations of the dimensionless particles of which all matter is composed. These particles exist in lattice-like quantum fields that permeate all of space; therein they form - with impenetrably complex (chaotic) interactions and vibrations - everything that is (atoms, molecules, compounds, you and me). The warm colors of these vibrations - painted against the cool, background colors of chaos - mirror the way of order. Cold, dark blues and purples seemed the natural choice to represent the cold, dark universe. Yet these colors are, appropriately, in the more energetic wavelengths of light. The rings also symbolize the laws of physics. In the same way that the colors seem to interact in a random fashion, but upon closer inspection yield the pattern that allows one to predict what should happen next, so, too, is this the way of the rules that govern the universe. Superficially inscrutable, the way in which the laws of physics interact to form a comprehensible whole is actually discernable - when we discover the proper way to perceive the pattern.

Within the sphere of Yang (the universe), existing perpetually at the extremity in dynamic asymmetry, is Lord Chaos. He is the manipulator, the changer, the destroyer. He is power, action, catalyst. He is also entropy - the second law of thermodynamics - compelling all things to degenerate from an initial state of order to a final state of chaos. Here he is the forces that determine a stellar lifetime. The star at the center is the seed of Order in the domain of Chaos. As the source of heat and light (which allows order - life, for instance - to flourish and grow), and the forge of the 90 naturally occurring elements heavier than helium (thus providing the necessary materials for order to propagate), a star is the natural symbol for order. This star, however, is nearing the end of its existence. Under the wrathful ministrations of chaos, its fuel is being syphoned off by a black hole. On the T'ai-chi clock, this big crunch is at the bottom of the cycle: 6 O'clock - the end of space, the end of time, the end of the cosmos.

Traversing Domains

Modern cosmology describes our 4-dimensional universe (three dimensions of space, and one of time) as space-time, and even in an endless and unbounded cosmos, there is an edge of space and an edge of time.

The boundary of space can be thought of as the Planck-Wheeler length (1.62 X 10-33 cm). At most places in the macroscopic (large-scale) universe, the shape of space is thought of as generally flat (that is, light travels in a straight line, the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line, and the laws of Euclidian geometry apply); or it is only marginally warped, as when distended by some massive object such as a planet or a star. At the Planck-Wheeler length, however, the predictable geometry and topology of linear space explodes into a probabilistic effervescence called quantum foam. What secrets await in smaller realms than this we shall never know, for the laws of physics break apart with the space-time continuum at this scale. The infinitesimally small is another domain: contained yet containing, connected to and supporting, yet separate and removed from the cosmos. And this spatial boundary, this edge of existence, is every infinitesimal point in the entire universe: in your hand, in the earth, and in the sky.

The boundary in time can be thought of as Planck time, or 10 -43 second after the big bang explosion that created space-time. At that moment, differentiated space, time, gravity, energy, and matter exploded as the infinitely hot (but quickly cooling) fireball of material reality. But our knowledge shall never venture prior to that moment, to the perfect symmetry of the unified forces (the strong and weak nuclear forces, electro-magnetism, and gravity) that existed before. Why not? Because our understanding of physics requires a time at (or in) which an event takes place, and it requires a cause that preceded that event in time. But physics comes into being with time. All those magnificent mathematical equations that have produced the technological miracle of our age, can only theorize back to Planck time and then say: there was nothing before. Once again the threshold of physical law will forever forbid our inspection of the absolute.

And there are more dramatic boundaries. When a star of sufficient mass (30 times the size of our sun) uses up its available hydrogen fuel, it can no longer generate enough heat to counteract the attractive force of gravity. It begins to violently contract under its own weight with so much power that, at the end of this process of contraction, gravity will overwhelm the electro-magnetic force (that keeps electrons apart) and the nuclear force (that keeps nucleons in close proximity apart). In fact the star will actually collapse - dragging space and time along with it - to an infinitesimal speck known as a singularity. And the physical, theorisable boundary of that singularity is described by the that same Planck-Wheeler length of 1.62 X 10 -33 cm. The black hole, by crushing thirty solar masses to zero size (beyond the Planck-Wheeler length), becomes infinitely dense. It then literally falls out of existence (the physically knowable), creating an infinite distension of the fabric of space-time. The event horizon is a spherically shaped region of intense gravity around the singularity, from within which nothing - not even light - can ever escape. The event horizon might have a diameter of ten miles, but its radius - the distance from the perimeter to the center - is infinite. If a celestial explorer wished to leap off the edge of the universe, this is the only place it can be done.

General relativity (Einstein's observationally validated theory - but not yet law - of gravity) explains that gravity bends our 3-dimensional (or 3-D) space, or, more accurately, our 4-D space-time. In the same way that one cannot bend a 2-D piece of paper within the confinement of two dimensions (any bending can only be specified by a third set of co-ordinates perpendicular to the other two - our third spatial dimension), the suggestion that our universe is warped by gravity demands that there is something greater beyond it, into which it bends. For instance, a 2 dimensional piece of paper is completely contained by a third dimension that surrounds it on all sides, and touches it at all points - in fact, any and every point on the plane is the edge of that 2-D universe. So, too, must it be with a 3-dimensional universe: any infinitesimal point anywhere in the vast cosmos, exists at a precipice - the abyss at the end of the universe. If a 2-D being could just look "up," he might discern that a 3-D "space universe" surrounds his 2-D "plane universe." If we could look "up" into hyperspace (the fifth dimension, beyond 4-D space-time) what might we see? A black hole is a place where we get to look "up." When our imaginary explorer finally leaps off the edge of the universe, into what will he fall?

The Domain of Order

We cross this boundary as we move into the left side of the painting - the domain of Goddess Order. The rows of spheres that diminish in size as they get nearer to the sphere of Order are meant to be a stylized representation of quantum foam - the turbulent end of space-time. At the Planck-Wheeler length near the singularity inside the black hole, space-time begins to boil and froth. Once an apparently seamless continuum, space-time now starts to rip and pull apart. The laws of quantum mechanics forbid physical investigation, but in a purely metaphysical idealization we can imagine zooming down to inspect the fuzzy topological features of a speck of quantum froth at, say, 10 -100 cm. And then we might zoom down, ever smaller, to the froth fizzing above the froth at, say, 10 -1000 cm. At this infinitesimal scale Order acquires supremacy over Chaos, and imposes Her Perfect Will upon the chaotic bubblings of space-time at the Great Boundary between the fleeting immanent and the Eternal Transcendent.

Yin and Yang represent the great forces of opposition in the eternal dance of the cosmos, but Yin is thought of as unchanging and absolute. For this reason, the proper way to read the T'ai-chi T'u, is to place the center of the diagram in the heart of Order. Yin is the still center around which Yang, the moving periphery, revolves in the cosmic dance. When the resulting pattern is perceived in the right way (one rotation in 24 increments), the Lotus becomes apparent. The Lotus is a symbol associated with the creator in all eastern mythology, from ancient Egypt and Persia to Modern China and Japan. It is the golden flower, the flower of light, the cosmic womb, beauty incarnate. The Lotus grows out of the water, like the universe grew out of the primordial sea of nothingness. As the elemental union of water (matter) and the fire of sunlight (spirit), it represents the source of all existence. Because it opens with the sunrise, and closes with the sunset, it suggests creation, renewal, and immortality. Like God, the Lotus is believed to be the creator of its own creation. Rising from the murky depths of the timeless darkness to unfold with perfect enlightened beauty in the sunlight, it symbolizes the awakening of awareness, the understanding of the true nature of reality and God. And within the unfolding petals of the Lotus, is pictured the Creator of the cosmos, seated in blissful repose. Enthroned upon the Lotus in eternal paradise, Order, with Infinite and Divine Will, sustains the structure of all that is.

In India, the tripartite nature of Divinity (1-subjective, 2-objective, and 3-both simultaneously) - The Holy Trinity - is represented by Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer. And they are popularly shown in this aspect: Shiva, as the ouroboric (self-consuming) World-Serpent, is coiled around the feet of beautiful Vishnu. The serpent which sheds it skin and is reborn anew - like Life which consumes life and is reborn anew, like the moon which is consumed by darkness and is reborn anew, like the earth which is consumed by the solar coil of the seasons and is reborn anew in spring - is symbolic of the cycles of time, which consumes all things, and yet is also the source of their renewal. And from Vishnu's navel grows a lotus blossom upon which is seated a tiny Brahma. But there is an unseen Forth in this Trinity. Where? We know that things do not grow from navels. Navels attach us to that from which we are grown. And so, in this beautifully symbolic representation, it is not the lotus that grows from Vishnu's navel, but rather Vishnu that grows from the Lotus: Devi, Mother of space, time, and the entire universe. She is the source of all things, of all the Gods. And all the Power of the Gods of Space and Time grow from her Transcendent Beauty. We in the west also represent the Trinity with an unseen Forth. Our Lotus is Mary - Mother of God.

Returning now to the image, the lotus petals expand outward into the composition, and are meant to indicate the transcendent realm that is both within and beyond the material universe. The within and the beyond are criss-crossed in this representation by a hexagon field, the geometry of which is specified by the revolving T'ai-chi. The resulting three lines that intersect at a common axis create the hexagons. The three lines symbolize the quantum fields that permeate all of space and manifest as all that is. There are many fields, but they can be classified in three main categories: the lepton field (electrons and neutrinos); the quark field (which forms protons and neutrons - which have other associated fields); and the boson field (which are the force carrying particles/waves - the photon for electro-magnetism, the gluon for the strong nuclear force, the W and Z particles for the weak nuclear force, and the graviton). In fact, it is this "trinity" of force particle/wave fields that holds the universe "up." And it is the Lotus Maiden of Eternity that holds them up.

The Perfection of Number

The glowing light in the center of each hexagon serves two functions: one, it represents the potential for another axis, another particle - or virtual particle; two, it is the light of the creator which exists at the centre of all things. In this painting the center is always circumscribed by a six-sided structure. The number six has, since early pre-history, been associated with order. Because of its unique arithmetic properties, six, and multiples of six, were the ideal values with which to quantify the affairs of man, and map the dominions - space and time - of the Creator (the large quantity of divisors that these numbers have made them easy to use). This predisposition to the number six, to in fact see a basic "sixness" in the cosmos, was prevalent across Eurasia and Africa, as well as in the Americas. In places all around the globe, man sought to emulate the mathematically ideal order of the cosmos, by re-creating its essential sixness on earth.

During the French Enlightenment of the 18th century, a new reverence for reason and logic - exemplified in the Greeks and their decimal system of mathematical notation - brought about a decline of the earlier sexagesimal system of measurements. Since 3000 B.C., the spiritually inspired base 60 had been used - in many different local variations - to measure the world. But now the new "metric system" (Base 10 - easier to use, but not as organic) is the "yardstick" with which we measure space. (Will those anti-intuitive metriphiles succeeed in their quest to similarly convert our still sexagesimal measurement of time?)

The atomic number of carbon - the element of life - is six, and its crystal structure is hexagonal. The bible describes God creating the universe in six days (or rotations of the earth), and resting upon the seventh. This became the model for the western week: six days of activity enclose a passive seventh day in the centre. Such human-made reckonings are a reflection of a simple geometric, or Absolute Truth: six perfect circles (or rotations of a line) arranged side by side in a larger perfect circle, exactly circumscribes a seventh circle of equal size. That is, a sixfold structure surrounds the master seventh component (or creator) in the center.

Why "lucky" seven should have been the number of the Divine in so many ancient belief systems all around the world is an interesting question. There are some important human perceptions that are informed by that number. Light, the most enduring symbol of the creator, is composed of six visible colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet (the primary and secondary colors of the rainbow), which when combined make the glorious Seventh - White. All that we will ever see is a combination of these seven colors (black is the absence of light, and not a color). And yet, they are but one octave in a vast scale of different frequencies of light - from radio waves to gamma rays - that we will never see. Fortunately, there are other forms of vibrations, scales of frequencies we experience in a different way, that we can perceive in greater magnitude.

In ancient times, one and two were not considered "real" numbers. One is the origin of all numbers, that divides into two. And from those two derive all things. So three and four are the first "real" numbers. Three (the Trinity) is the number of the spirit, the number of the transcendent, the number of God. Four (the points of the compass, the seasons, the states of matter) is the number of the body, the number of the immanent world. And these two numbers - 3 and 4 - have an interesting relationship. 3 + 4 = 7, and 3 X 4 = 12. This simple 7 - 12 arithmetic relationship is the basis for all musical structure. Within the 12-tone chromatic scale, is the better-known 7-tone diatonic scale: Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si... The final "Do" - vibrating exactly twice as fast as the first "Do" - begins a new octave. From ancient times this 7 - 12 relationship of music has been regarded as a way for the voice of the divine to penetrate into this existence. Like few other things we will experience in this life, these ordered mathematical ratios - given substance as harmonic inter-relationships between seven musical notes - pass effortlessly through our life-hardened exteriors, and can fill our weary hearts with rapture.

And there are some very unusual, purely mathematical properties of the number 7: 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 and 7 x 8 x 9 x 10 both equal 5040. And 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 and 8 x 9 x 10 both equal 720. Whether the number 7 is included or deleted, it acts as the pivot or center of the Dekad (the sacred Tetrakus of the ancient Greeks) - the very foundation of our decimal system of mathematical notation. No other number does this. Of all the polygons in the Dekad (triangle - 3, square - 4, pentagon - 5, etc.), only the heptagon cannot be captured precisely. The angle which specifies its construction is 51.42857142857..., an infinitely repeating decimal that can only be approximated - it does not exist with precision in the real world. (Although the angle of the Great Pyramid is VERY close approximation - off by less than 1 sixth of one degree!) Its place shall only ever be in the Eternal Transcendent realm of the Ideal. In fact, any number (excluding multiples of 7) divided by 7 results in the same infinitely repeating set of six numbers: 1 divided by 7 equals 0.142857142857..., and 279 divided by 7 equals 39.857142857..., etc. Six numbers forever in motion around, but never quite reaching, the elusive, transcendent number they seek to quantify. It is this mysterious, evanescent quality that led the ancients to associate 7 with the Sacred Virgin.

Symbol Loops

The receding hexagonal field surrounding the Goddess is a geometrical idealization of an infinite plane contained within a finite region (known as Lobachevskian, or hyperbolic geometry). When viewed in the right way, the arced lines of this hexagonal tiling form the diagram of a lithium atom, the international symbol for things atomic (and sub-atomic). Furthermore, the 3 ellipses that comprise this symbol, also form a Star of David (or Seal of Solomon). This symbol - the union of the downward pointing (vaguely yonic) triangle of feminine repose, and the upward pointing (vaguely phallic) triangle of masculine action (that is, the union of material earth and ethereal sky) - is yet another human attempt to describe the interpenetration and fusion of opposing principles locked in perfect balance to create this reality. The six-pointed star, a more international illustration of the same philosophy contained in the T'ai-chi T'u of eastern Asia, is also found in ancient Persia (the Star of Ishtar), and Tantric Buddhism (the Shri Yantra). In India this symbol is known as the Mark of Vishnu. It is also the symbol for the Anahata, or heart chakra: the central, mediating chakra of seven such energy centers in the body. This balancing and transformation of celestial and terrestrial energies is another symbolic union of Shakta and Shakti - of male and female. And the diamond shape of this painted image can be thought of as the union of two triangles - yet another representation of the union of Yin and Yang.

Perhaps one of the reasons we find such symbols so compelling, is because so often they are self-referential in paradoxical, but unsettlingly meaningful ways. These self-referential, auto-causal loops contain patterns within patterns, symbols within symbols, worlds within worlds - each existing only by virtue of all the rest. A first component creates another, which, in turn, creates the first component; remove a single part, and the entire edifice comes tumbling down. By indicating a succession or hierarchy of meanings, of interdependent levels of interpretation and understanding, symbols mirror the very cosmos itself. By recognizing and revealing the existence of patterns in the most unusual and unexpected places - whether in objective science or subjective spirituality - we are vindicated in our often only vaguely perceived sense that there must be some deeper purpose behind such grand and inscrutable things as life and the cosmos.

The Lotus Maiden of Eternity

Within the star of transformation is the Goddess Order, residing in perfect symmetry, and eternal absolute tranquility. Around Her head is a halo centered upon the sixth chakra - the chakra of visualization. The halo itself is a divine imagining of all creation, an infinite regression wherein wherein God and the universe are auto-catalytic in their own creation: the Creator dreams of a creation which has a Creator dreaming of a creation that, in turn, has a Creator...

The axis of the entire composition is the little purple amulet between Her breasts. There at the heart chakra of transformation is the seed of Chaos (the tiny Brahma) within the domain of Order. Here is where the Transcendent Spiritual manifests the immanent physical. Although eternally Tranquil Order is incapable of action, She possesses - in the seed of Chaos - the potential for change that is denied Her. Here is the engineer that would build the Architect's dream. Hear is the Power that Beauty needs to create Power. In this view of space, time, the universe, and God, there is no beginning, no ending - they are the same Place, the same Moment. This is the Eternal Cycle: Order creates Chaos, Chaos creates Order, which creates the Chaos that created the Order...and so on, forever, towards infinity...

Personal Notes on Order and Chaos from Jonathon

I find that people are divided on the issue of whether it is Order or Chaos that is supreme. Does Order properly occupy the top of the composition, or should Chaos? "He should be swooping down on Her!" I am sometimes told. And so He is. Order is seen as a tiny figure in the sun which He is about to consume. But the sun is not Order; it is a symbol for Order. In this Chaos is rather like us: we grab on to the symbol and think we have the thing in itself. We attach our little three letter word to a concept and think we have It. We have nothing of the kind.

God. What an interesting three letter word that is. Plato also believed in a dual nature of divinity. The transcendent, ethereal domain of ideas he called The Good. The immanent, physical world of the senses he called The Demiurge. And they are united in the Circle of Being - O - forever creating and uncreating the Trinity that is G-O-D.

My allegiance is to Order, but I recognize this inclination as a personal indulgence. The Two are One; there is no supremacy. Such notions are the product of human limitations...

- Jonathon Earl Bowser