@eglinski

Take a few moments to stare at the image (thanks to @unfolding for it). Notice how your perspective visually shifts to reorganise the Metatron’s cube mandala so that new patterns emerge. In this way, the actual viewing of the painting is an act of creation between you and the picture.

This painting, “Temple Metatron,” by Luke Orsborne ($5,200 USD, 22.5 × 33"), illustrates the fractal nature of Metatron’s cube. Its interlocking nature with other cubes creates more complexity, but meaningful patterns can be had by subjective interpretation — apophenia?

Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The term was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad, who defined it as the “unmotivated seeing of connections” accompanied by a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness.”

From the Lakoffian point of view, the mind is viewed as a “delusion-generator” rather than a window to true understanding. As George Lakoff said: “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”

The problem: apophenia is seeing nonsense in random data that makes sense to the mind. Which mind? Symbols are unconscious projections, but beyond that there is the archetypal and mythic structures which appear to be universal in nature.

Susan Blackmore, at TED (or Wired), states that a meme is “not an idea” but that which is imitated, or information which is copied. It is her notion that humans are just machines for propagating memes:

The whole idea of a meme is that it’s information that is copied with variation and selection. So any idea that is copied from person to person is a meme. But an idea that you think up for yourself and is not expressed is not a meme. The emphasis has to be on copying, because that’s what makes evolution possible. Lots of ideas are never copied at all. They just go to a couple people and then they fizzle out.

In his Anatomy of Criticism, literary theorist Northrop Frye established his theory of modes. Frye proposes five levels, or phases, of symbolism, each phase independently possessing its own mythos, ethos, and dianoia. It is important to note Frye’s definition of a literary symbol: “any unit of any literary structure that can be isolated for critical attention.”

Symbolic phases:

• literal/descriptive (motifs and signs)
• formal (image)
• mythical (archetype)
• anagogic (monad)

Recall Private Jack Bell’s narration at the end of The Thin Red Line:

What is this great evil? How did it steal into the world? From what seed, what root did it spring? Who’s doing this? Who’s killing us? Robbing us of light and life. Mocking us with the sight of what we might have known.

Oh my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes, look out at the things you’ve made. All things shining.

Loading mentions Retweet